At this stage of the presidential campaign, it is understandable that candidates would go after the relatively low-hanging fruit in foreign policy issues. Top Democratic aspirants, buoyed by negative opinion surveys, have seized on a troop pullout from Iraq. Leading Republicans insist on an end to Cuba’s dictatorship. Most sound tough on blocking Iran from developing a nuclear weapons program.

 Democracy promotion, especially in the Middle East, would seem to be another easy issue. But that has become a messy proposition, as today’s Politico points out, citing the chaotic state of affairs following elections that brought Hamas to power in the Palestinian territories. Politico says quasi-candidate Fred Thompson has embraced democracy with the most gusto on the campaign trail. But if spreading the cause of freedom has been lacking from candidates’ rhetoric, many candidates — as different as Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney — have carved out positions that generally embrace democratic promotion.

Some pundits abroad continue to view democracy promotion as part of a neocon plot but it enjoys far more bipartisan support than realized. Years before President Bush made it the clarion call of his second inaugural address, President Clinton had also been a democracy promotion champion. His administration played an important role in founding the Community of Democracies, a collection of like-minded states that the Bush administration now views as an important vehicle for reform at the UN. It is for that reason that some Middle East analysts expect little different in policy for the region whether a Democrat or a Republican is elected.