Some new information from The Hill, a newspaper devoted to covering Congress, came out last night on Barack Obama's service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with regard to Afghanistan. On its face, it is not flattering to Obama.

First, some context.

The fact that Barack Obama has not called a single policy hearing for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs since becoming its chair in January 2007 has been percolating for a while, but gained prominence last week when Hillary Clinton brought it up in the debate in Ohio. While the subcommittee has jurisdiction over a wide range of issues, the immediate context was Afghanistan, and the subcommittee's role in overseeing U.S. relations with NATO, which is playing a critical role there. Obama's response was that he's been busy campaigning since becoming chair, but that his position on Afghanistan is clear:

SEN. CLINTON: But I also have heard Senator Obama refer continually to Afghanistan, and he references being on the Foreign Relations Committee. He chairs the Subcommittee on Europe. It has jurisdiction over NATO. NATO is critical to our mission in Afghanistan. He's held not one substantive hearing to do oversight, to figure out what we can do to actually have a stronger presence with NATO in Afghanistan.

You have to look at the entire situation to try to figure out how we can stabilize Afghanistan and begin to put more in there to try to get some kind of success out of it, and you have to work with the Iraqi government so that they take responsibility for their own future.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Obama, I want you to respond to not holding oversight for your subcommittee. But also, do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, first of all, I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan.

I have been very clear in talking to the American people about what I would do with respect to Afghanistan.

This struck me as a surprisingly weak response to an issue that has been out there for more than a month. In Obama's defense, some folks on the blogosphere responded that (1) a junior senator doesn't have much influence anyway, (2) congressional committees and subcommittees are a waste of time, (3) nothing much is happening in Europe, and most convincingly to me, (4) while NATO is under the jurisdiction of Obama's subcommittee, Afghanistan itself is not--it can be addressed either from the Foreign Relations Committee as a whole, or John Kerry's subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs.

New from The Hill

As a follow-up to that, The Hill reported that Obama's attention to Afghanistan outside of his own subcommittee is, shall we say, sparse:

Obama absent at Afghanistan hearings
By Sam Youngman
Posted: 03/01/08 11:17 PM [ET]

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has come under fire about his readiness to be commander-in-chief, missed two of three Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Afghanistan since joining the panel.

Obama has said the U.S. should have stayed focused on fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan while repeatedly criticizing his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) for their votes in favor of a resolution backing the Iraq war.

But since joining Foreign Relations, Obama has missed three meetings on a "new strategy" in Afghanistan, a country he has never visited.

Obama was absent from a January 31 meeting this year, and also was not present for a hearing on Sept. 21, 2006. He did attend a March 8, 2007 hearing on a new Afghanistan strategy.

On Feb. 15, 2007, Obama also missed a committee hearing on U.S. ambassadors to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama continually touts his initial and prescient opposition to the war in Iraq and the subsequent distraction away from Afghanistan. He has a right to do this as a candidate. But he has shown very little actual legislative interest in Afghanistan, even as he is calling for more American troops to be sent there. Not only has he not used his own subcommittee to educate himself, the Senate, and the public on NATO's role in Afghanistan, he apparently has also not taken advantage of opportunities on the full Foreign Relations Committee as well.

(I should note that all the information I have on this is from the article. If there is good counterbalancing information, please let me know.)

The broader concern.

Somehow we as a voting public have arrived at a mentality that in running for President, it's an advantage to have less experience and less understanding of government than more. Candidates are forever running as outsiders and not having been drawn into the failed ways of Washington. For whatever reason, for what is by far the most important and complicated job in the world, we've decided that the more time you've spent learning about it, the less qualified you are.

But obviously this isn't really productive, and politics isn't just about getting elected. I want to have confidence that my president isn't merely good at giving speeches and getting votes. I want to know that he or she takes the process of governing seriously. It may be fine not to be well-versed in the intricacies of congressional process, but it is not fine to not have a deep understanding of the real issues at stake and a real intellectual hunger for the intricacies of actual policy. And for this reason, I am not yet comfortable with the idea of President Barack Obama. I want to know that he takes governing every bit as seriously as campaigning. And when I find out that he has been almost completely absent on an issue on which he frequently praises himself, it is worrying.

For comparison, as Steve Clemons (who originally discovered that Obama had held no hearings) noted, both the same Senate subcommittee under Republican control and the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe have both been much more active.

In the 109th Congress (2005-2006), the Senate subcommittee was chaired by George Allen, who has never had a reputation for hard work or intellectual stature. And yet I found at least three hearings that Allen chaired:

The Lifting of the EU Arms Embargo on China, March 16, 2005

U.S.-E.U. Regulatory Cooperation on Emerging Technologies, May 11, 2005

Islamist Extremism in Europe, April 5, 2006

Allen even had the excuse that he was running in a high-stakes election himself, one that he would eventually lose to Jim Webb.

The House counterpart to Obama's subcommittee has been very active as well, holding at least nine hearings since January 2007, under chair Robert Wexler (Florida).

11/14/2007 U.S.-Greece Relations and Regional Issues

10/3/2007 America's Role in Addressing Outstanding Holocaust Issues

6/20/2007 Adding Hezbollah to the EU Terrorist List

5/24/2007 Expanding the Visa Waiver Program, Enhancing Transatlantic Relations

5/3/2007 Do the United States and Europe Need a Missile Defense System?

4/17/2007 Extraordinary Rendition in U.S. Counterterrorism Policy: The Impact on Transatlantic Relations

3/28/2007 Opening up of the Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archives in Germany

3/22/2007 Polling Data on European Opinion of American Policies, Values and People

3/15/2007 U.S.-Turkish Relations and the Challenges Ahead

As we can see, there are some highly important issues here, including relations with Turkey (a country much in the news for its involvement with Iraq), missile defense, extraordinary rendition, and others. Obviously, as a House member, Wexler is never really not campaigning.

And for completeness, because everything is always about Hillary Clinton in the end, she has been chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health, whose glamorous charter includes oversight of toxic waste dumps, brownfields, and other exciting topics. She has held three hearings since January 2007:

October 17, 2007 - Oversight Hearing on the Federal Superfund Program's Activities to Protect Public Health

July 25, 2007 - Oversight of the EPA's Environmental Justice Programs   

June 20, 2007 - EPA's Response to 9-11 and Lessons Learned for Future Emergency Preparedness

Obviously Hillary Clinton has also been busy campaigning every bit as much as Obama. But she didn't use that as an excuse to not do her job as chair--in fact, her latest hearing was in October, when the campaign was already in high gear.

Conclusion?

While I strongly support Hillary Clinton, I understand that Obama is the clear frontrunner and the likely nominee of our party. I want to be comfortable with the idea of him as president. And while he's clearly intelligent and hugely charismatic, I want to get a sense that he wants more than the idea of being president. I want to know he wants to do the job of being president, in all of its tremendous workload and its tedious but critical detail. And his record in this matter is distressing, to say the least.