Bill Clinton’s urging of a truce between Obama and Hillary isn’t terribly shocking; it’s in keeping with her strategy.

As frontrunner, she needs to bat down any argument that another candidate would make a better nominee for the Democratic party than her. For a rival to be better, there needs to be a distinction; if they agree on all the issues, the party might as well stick with the frontrunner. You’ll notice in every debate, Hillary emphasizes, "That’s why all of us agree…" or "I think every Democrat on this stage would make a better president than any of the Republicans…" (Right. Gravel over Rudy. Kucinich over Romney. Dodd over McCain. Biden over Thompson.) She’s trying to persuade Democratic primary voters that there’s no reason to change their current order of preferences.

The reason the should-the-president-meet-with-dictators debate got such attention all of last week and on the Sunday shows was that it was one of the first real, substantive disagreements between Obama and Hillary. (You can only talk about 2002 opposition to the Iraq war for so long.)

Of course, some of us think sending either a Secretary of State or a President for a smiling photo-op with a dictator usually ends up benefiting the dictator a lot more than it benefits us anyway, so we’ll find the argument moot. But this is a big deal to Democrats, who believe that Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmedinjiad, Hugo Chavez, etc., are reasonable guys and can be talked into mutual cooperation if we just compromise enough.

This is why Team Obama needs to emphasize every policy difference they can find - starting with something like federal funding for needle exchange programs. He supports it, Hillary doesn’t.

Source: The Campaign Spot

Not sure I agree 100% - I think Dick Morris is on to something by referring to the polling data that showed that she was losing this round - and Bill Clinton was tapped to come in and smooth the waters.