Much time has been spent, and rightfully so, in discussing Governor Sarah Palin’s remarks on national security. Does she understand enough and is she capable of taking over if the unimaginable occurs? But that legitimate line of inquiry should be put in context. We, after all, are electing a President. So perhaps our primary concern should be with the men who are vying for that job.

And that should, I think, send us back to what we know about the judgment, positions and records of the two top candidates. Clark Judge, former speechwriter to Ronald Reagan, contends that Barack Obama’s utterances and record should give us pause:

It is hard to pick the low point. There have been so many — from advocating abrogation of NAFTA to proposing unconditional direct talks between US president Obama and Iranian president Ahmadinejad to announcing in a televised debate that he would start pulling US troops out of Iraq within sixty days of taking office to his running mate telling Israeli generals that they would have to learn to live with a nuclear Iran. It is quite a list.

But my top pick for low moment came in just the past couple of weeks. In an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Senator Obama said of our troop surge in Iraq that no one could have imagined how successful it would be. The mainstream media glided over the confession, but it is worth noting that early advocate John McCain as well as the much maligned George W. Bush and the brilliant David Petraeus all were able to imagine the surge’s success. By her support for the surge, Governor Palin was, too.

There are other contenders for Obama’s low point as well — the undivided Jerusalem switcheroo, the similar flip-flop on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, and his initial reaction to the invasion of Georgia. But the issue here is not “experience” per se, but what judgment he demonstrated when confronted with national security issues and crises. Obama has no more experience on Arab-Israeli negotiations than Palin or any other Governor, but he expressed a view and has an outlook on these and other issues which should be a legitimate consideration for voters.

Yes, Obama has cast votes (or avoided them, as in the case of Kyl-Lieberman). But it’s not the “experience” of casting the vote but what it tells us about his temperament and his judgment which is noteworthy. Indeed, that was his argument throughout the primary–his superior judgment on the original decision to launch the Iraq war. Perhaps we should finally take him at his word and assess him and his counterpart on that basis.