This Obama Campaign video is a twenty-minute sell to women but it’s revealing on a million levels. Obama’s wife Michelle features prominently. Alice Walker makes an appearance as do several non-celebrity civilian supporters. It’s long and candid and clearly meant to cut into any gender-biased lead Hillary may be enjoying.

One theme of the video has to do with the way foreign policy affects women, something about the tragedy of their kids going off to die as part of a macho frontier-style showdown that should have been thought through, that could have been diplomatically negotiated to much better effect. The video underlines a shift that sees foreign policy as perhaps one of junior senator Obama’s strongest suits in attempting to unseat Hillary as frontrunner. Her vaunted “experience” now seems to be working against her, her record on foreign affairs suggesting that she’s been nothing more (or less) than a fellow traveler of the Bush administration, the “cowboy diplomacy” of which has led us into unraveling wars on two continents, sunk our reputation everywhere in the world, and spurred foreign service officers of conscience to resign in droves.

Obama says his background—his family in Kenya, his growing up in Muslim Indonesia—will make a significant difference and signal the world that the dark era of isolation and xenophobia and war-making has come to an end. His wife told Iowans in Council Bluffs that Obama “called the Iraq war from the beginning. And he was right because he’s special. Because he has lived a broad life…”

Obama’s recent tougher stump tactics have won him a reported lead in the statistical dead heat that is the Iowa Democratic primary. He did a quick Q&A with Salon yesterday on foreign policy after a town meeting at Grundy High in Caucus Land.