Last week’s Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama really depressed me. And not just because the moderators spent the first 40 minutes on “gotcha” questions with no relevance to the problems we face.

ABC News’ Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos gave such short shrift to foreign policy queries, you’d think we had no overseas problems. Never mind that George W. Bush will leave behind a Mideast mess worse than any I’ve seen.

Even more frustrating: On the few questions involving Iraq, there was no effort to get the candidates to flesh out their thinking. Both Democrats are more realistic than Sen. John McCain in recognizing that U.S. troops can’t remain forever. Unlike McCain, they know a “diplomatic surge” that includes Iran is vital to stabilizing the region.

The Democrats’ main advantage is such new thinking. But neither has told us what they’d do if too swift a withdrawal leads to greater mayhem in Iraq and in the region, a possibility I think likely. Instead of probing the thinking behind these withdrawal plans, the ABC team goaded Clinton to confirm whether she’d pull out as fast as Obama, and by what date.

Folks, we are facing huge perils in the Mideast; the problems in Iraq won’t be ended by the speed of our exit, but by how well we engineer it. So let me try to examine the candidates’ plans in a way that Gibson and Stephanopoulos didn’t.

On withdrawal plans: Obama has been the most concrete, saying he would withdraw all combat brigades in 16 months. Clinton has talked of removing “one to two brigades a month,” but hasn’t set a timeline for completing a pullout.

Until now, Clinton’s approach has been the more responsible. Setting a date certainly will only entangle a Democratic president in a pledge he or she will wind up breaking. It’s wishful thinking to believe a timeline will force Iraqi factions to reconcile. And wishful thinking is what led the Bush team to the current disastrous Iraq mess.

Setting an exit date now will encourage Iraqi factions to gear up for bigger battles as the Americans are leaving. It will prompt Iraq’s neighbors to increase arms and support for their Sunni or Shiite proxies inside the country. This, in turn, will undermine prospects for the “diplomatic surge” we need to leave without a rout.

So, holding back on any date for final withdrawal makes sense. A timeline for U.S. withdrawal should be a card the next president uses in his or her diplomatic efforts to promote a new security arrangement in the region. It should await Election Day so that a newly chosen commander in chief can re-examine the situation on the ground.

Until recently, Clinton seemed to get this. I was told by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Clinton adviser, that Clinton “has made very clear that putting a termination date doesn’t make sense. Remember Bosnia,” where U.S. troops were supposed to be out in one year, but stayed for nearly a decade.

“Her end point is to get out,” said Albright, “but in a way permitting her to (first) deal with and listen to military people. I think she is very responsible in not putting a date.”

Yet in the ABC debate, Clinton was goaded – with quotes from some of her advisers – to say whether she was committed to bringing one or two brigades out of Iraq every month no matter how bad the situation on the ground.

Her answer: “Yes, I am. …” Then she and Obama competed to stress that each, as president, would not just accept cues from military commanders (like Gen. David Petraeus). Making this kind of finite exit pledge now is foolish. Why should a Democrat want to lock himself or herself into a posture he or she may have to shift after becoming commander in chief?

The answer is … gotcha politics. Clinton has decried the words of a former Obama adviser, Samantha Power, who was fired, in part, for saying the obvious to a reporter: that the Illinois senator, if elected, would have to review his Iraq plans based on the situation in early 2009. So the New York senator has boxed herself into a spot where she can’t make the same logical point.

Yet Obama made the same point as Power in a visit to The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News editorial boards: “I always reserve the right to listen to commanders on the ground and to adjust to changing circumstances,” he told us. “It would be irresponsible of me to say otherwise.” He added that every future president should learn this lesson from the Bush administration’s errors: “If you ignore reality, it has this habit of biting you in the face.”

He is right.

So I wish, instead of competing to prove which will be first to the Iraq exit, both Democrats would be more honest about what “responsible withdrawal” means. Done wrong, it is likely to be very messy and to drag us into new Mideast perils. Clinton should stick to her earlier position; Obama should rethink the merits of setting a timeline now.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. E-mail [email protected].