One way to get some feeling for the candidates' actual beliefs--and possible presidential actions--is to look at the people they turn to for advice

I've taken a lot of time trying to figure out how to figure out what to think about the presidential candidates. What I really want to know is: What do they really believe in? What would they actually do as president? To put it another way, in the face of implacable right-wing obstructionism, what would they really fight for?

The obvious problem is that modern political campaigns are designed to keep us from finding out any of the above. They're designed to be carefully scripted so that we hear nothing except what the consultants on duty think we want to hear. I began to despair of ever finding out anything useful. At the presidential level, where the stakes are so high, the notion of listening to what the candidates say can seem almost comical.

One obvious trick is the tried-and-true:

FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!

Those people aren't giving money out of the goodness of their heart. They want something.

Of course, so do our cherished Blue America contributors. I guess the difference is scale. Blue America contributors don't expect a financial return on their investment. The big contributors and money-raisers do. I find it more useful to think of them, not as campaign contributors, but as campaign investors. (On this count there is some separation in John Edwards' eschewal of corporate cash.)

As I wrote yesterday, I have basic problems with the basic premise of Barack Obama's campaign. I believe the candidate means well, but I also believe he's going to find out, if he makes it to the White House, what some of his more unsavory backers already know: that the entrenched interests standing in the way of solutions to our most pressing problems have no intention of rising above partisanship. And I don't see much evidence that he has a Plan B.

I wish I could see some evidence that Hillary Clinton is, or means to be, anything other than the captive agent of the Beltway Insiders. No, no, I'm not being rhetorical here--I really wish I could see some evidence, any evidence.

Beyond following the money trail, the one technique I can think of--apart from paying attention to the candidates' actual words (a desperate last resort)--is to look at the people they surround themselves with, the people from whose brains we are apt to see the new administration's policies percolating.

Months ago already, I remember Paul Krugman writing about the respective candidates' economic advisers. Now I wish I remembered what he said. Now in The Nation Ari Berman has written about the Clinton and Obama foreign-policy advisers, with some brief, tacked-on consideration of Edwards'.

I don't want to oversimplify the findings, especially with both Clinton and Obama having more than 200 foreign-policy advisers, and with many of the most important questions yet to be articulated. But Berman does seem to think the Obama team shows more flexibility and creativity:

It's true that a number of Obama's key advisers--like former National Security Adviser Tony Lake, former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig--held prominent positions under Bill Clinton. At the same time, Obama's team includes some of the most forward-thinking members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment--like Joseph Cirincione [above] and Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, the party's leading experts on nonproliferation and defense issues, respectively, along with former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and Carter Administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Added to the mix are fresh faces who were at times critical of the Clinton Administration, like Harvard professor Samantha Power, author of "A Problem From Hell", a widely acclaimed history of US responses to genocide. These names suggest that Obama may be more open to challenging old Washington assumptions and crafting new approaches.

Hillary Clinton's camp, meanwhile, is filled with familiar faces from her husband's administration, like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke [right]. Unlike Obama's advisers, the top Clintonites overwhelmingly supported the war in Iraq. From the march to war onward, Clinton and her advisers have dominated foreign policy discussions inside the Democratic Party. After largely supporting the war, they resisted calls for an exit strategy until 2005, when the situation had become unmanageably bleak. After turning against the war the Clintonites argued retroactively that Senator Clinton had voted, in Holbrooke's words, "to empower the President to avoid war."