This is a Cato Daily podcast for Monday, September 29th, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

John McCain and Barack Obama have put their first presidential debate in the books, but for all their

attempts to draw distinctions from one another, their similarities may be among their more

troubling qualities.

Chris Preble, the Cato Institute's Director of Foreign Policy Studies, comments.

Russia, Iraq, and Pakistan really went to deny. Could you

between McCain and Obama and also

some key similarities that each candidate really tried to deny.

Could you describe some of those? Well, I think the similarity... each candidate really tried to deny. Right.

Could you describe some of those?

Well, I think the similarities are interesting.

McCain tried to knock Obama's suggestion last year, which at the time did engender a lot of criticism that the

United States should engage in hot pursuit over the border if we had evidence of

Pakistani of al-Qaeda operating in Pakistani territory and attacking

troops in Afghanistan.

McCain knocked that as naive, even though of course the Bush administration has explicitly adopted that policy

and publicly adopted that policy within the last few months.

Obviously it is a risky strategy.

It engenders a lot of criticism from the Pakistani

officials Pakistani government and the use of force frankly isn't much supported

even in Afghanistan President Karzai has criticized the use of force that leads to civilian casualties

and that's the danger of these kind of hot pursuit missions.

...