In an April 27 Los Angeles Times article on the Democratic presidential candidates debate, staff writers Peter Wallsten and Mark Z. Barabak wrote, “Even as they roundly attacked President Bush's policies on Iraq, the leading Democratic candidates for president sought to burnish their credentials Thursday as tough leaders who would defeat terrorists.” They also asserted that the Democrats face a “challenge” because they “must woo antiwar primary election voters while fending off Republican attempts to paint them as weak on defense.” Wallsten and Barabak did not explain the contradiction they purported to identify between criticizing the Bush administration's initiation and execution of the Iraq war and presenting oneself as a “tough leader[] who would defeat terrorists” and is not “weak on defense.”

The article began by highlighting the national security element of the Democratic presidential debate:

Even as they roundly attacked President Bush's policies on Iraq, the leading Democratic candidates for president sought to burnish their credentials Thursday as tough leaders who would defeat terrorists.

Their comments came in a generally tame but wide-ranging debate, the first of the 2008 campaign, and underscored the challenge facing Democratic candidates, who must woo antiwar primary election voters while fending off Republican attempts to paint them as weak on defense, which could prove damaging in the general election.

In those statements, Wallsten and Barabak also promote the myth that Republicans retain an advantage among voters on defense and national security issues when, in fact, several polls in the past year have found that voters trust Democrats more than Republicans on these issues, as Media Matters for America has noted. For example, in a March 7-11 New York Times poll, 45 percent of respondents said the Democratic Party was “more likely to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq,” while 32 percent said the Republican Party was more likely. A February 22-25 Washington Post/ABC News poll found 52 percent of respondents “trust[ed]” congressional Democrats “to do a better job handling” the “U.S. campaign against terrorism,” while 39 percent of respondents said they “trust[ed]” Bush.

Media Matters noted that NBC Nightly News anchor and debate co-host Brian Williams made a similar comparison during the debate. After quoting former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's (R) recent claim that “America will be safer with a Republican president,” Williams asked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), “How do you think, Senator, it happened that that notion of Republicans as protectors in a post-9-11 world has taken on so?”