Oops. We're Doing It Again.

There's only one thing worse than the NY Times Christmas present reminder that old-school consultants make millions of dollars off our Democratic candidates for president -- the constant and shocking reminders that they don't know what they are doing, in fact, they wouldn't pass muster at even a low-level advertising agency.

Here's the issue:

Democratic consultants poll the population, well, the population willing to receive cold calls - ie those who have not figured out how to put themselves on the 'do not call' registry. Once called, these respondents give quick answers (who wants to stay on a telemarketing call for longer than they need to?) and they leave the consultants with all the great answers.

The consultants then, armed with crappy talking head t.v. spots, pour money and energy into positioning their candidate to meet the needs of the above polls; often with unintentionally humorous results, think John Kerry duck-hunting in Ohio.

But what they never truly factor in, or frankly, and I am serious, consider is whether or not the claims and positioning that they are putting their candidate in makes any logical sense at all. They live in a world, or actually, lived in a world, where the t.v. spots and journalistic control meant they could sell their candidate on whatever we wanted.

What's tragic is that they also don't consider the real and true strengths of their candidate and position and sell their candidate on the candidate's strengths. This would be the business approach to marketing. You look at the product and brand and position the brand admittedly in the best possible light, but with a basis in reality.

If you're working on the marketing for Southwest Airlines for example, you wouldn't sell full service, you would sell the humor of the brand and the cheap seats.

Conversely, you wouldn't sell Mercedes as the affordable car even though if you ask everyone you would get the same answer - I want a great car, cheap. Well, you wouldn't unless of course you're a consultant.

This brings me to two candidates, Senators Obama and Clinton, and one issue, foreign policy.

The world is a dangerous place, as clearly shown today by the death of Benazhir Butto, and clearly, having foreign policy experience is something voters are looking for - i.e. it shows up in the polling.

So both candidates are claiming the foreign policy expert positioning.

Back to that in a second.

Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have enormous personal and political strengths; they both are dedicated to the country, to core Democratic principals and making our country and the world a better place.

They both could be making millions in the private sector but have dedicated their lives to public service - they are outstanding candidates.

However, between them, they have zero real foreign policy experience.

But this hasn't stopped the campaigns. On these pages, Dr. Rice, a woman with real experience, has been touting Barack's foreign policy experience, claiming, with a straight face, that his three years sitting on the Foreign Relations Committee counts as 'experience.'

Hillary has been touting her foreign policy experience, again in an unintentional moment of humor claiming that as First Lady, she went to countries "too dangerous" for Bill Clinton and Al Gore to venture too.

As Jon Weiner points out, this is laughable.

There, ultimately, are two tragedies here.

The first is that these two candidates seem inauthentic as they attempt to claim a position of leader on foreign policy - deep down, they each know that they are far from foreign policy experts and voters can sniff a politician trying to be something they're not from four cornfields away in Iowa.

The second is that if foreign policy is the benchmark issue, we have two great candidates with real foreign policy experience, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. However, in each of their cases, they have spent MORE money talking about things like jobs and health care than they have their foreign policy experience.

One guess as to why that is.