This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 15, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Five Democrats who want to be president took to the stage to talk

about why they should each be given the White House, but the debate was short on foreign

policy substance, so say Cato's Emma Ashford and Chris Preble.

Emma, you noted during the debate that let's all keep in mind that of the candidates on the stage here,

the one who supported the Iraq war was

Hillary Clinton how well did she talk about foreign policy relating to Iraq

Afghanistan Syria and others.

Well, particularly on the Iraq war, it's really interesting.

She was asked directly why she supported the Iraq war,

and she actually did a rather neat answer where she pivoted

immediately to her experiences as part of the Obama administration said well the

president trusts me and just never answered the actual question so she did a great job deflecting a lot of the problems

from her record previously. The same with Libya. She said it was a great success

for US smart power. I think that's an extremely misleading statement, but the moderator's never really

called her on it.

I agree.

I think that one of the best moments for Hillary Clinton, not necessarily the best moment for the rest of the country, is when she

managed to pivot from the question about her judgment in going into the Iraq war and supporting the Iraq

war and saying essentially that Barack Obama

trusted my judgment enough to make me Secretary of State and that ended the discussion.

...