JOHN EDWARDS'S FOREIGN POLICY DILEMMA


I didn't get to see last night's debate, but from accounts of the debate and from the transcript it appeared to be a Kerry victory.


Not surpisingly, the area with tripped Edwards up was foreign policy. On Haiti, Kerry demonstrated he knew far more about the issue than his rival. But the real damage came on the question Edwards knew to expect - his support for the war in Iraq. In reponse, Edwards produced an answer that had Kerry-like clarity without the substance (and giving Kerry an opening to repay Edwards for his zinger following Kerry's long-winded answer on the question in Wisconsin.


The muffed Iraq question, however, is symbolic of Edwards' larger problems on foreign policy. By and large, Edwards has pretty much taken the same blurry stances on foreign policy issues as Kerry. The difference is that Edwards' vagueness on issues comes from a lack of familiarity with these issues, while Kerry's comes in a sense from an overfamiliarty - the continuing tension between his Jeffersonian conviction and his political survival instincts. The result is a discussion that plays to Kerry advantages - he gets to demonstrate his superior experience and knowledge of details, without being pressed to defend the contradictions and shifts in his positions.


The only way for Edwards to counter this problem is to shift the debate from details to principles - by taking firm stances on issues that distinguishes him from Kerry. The dilemma facing Edwards is that he can't take a firmer dovish stance than Kerry: (1) it doesn't fit with his vote on the war, (2) there is little room to maneuver to the left of Kerry on current Iraq policy short of joining Kucinich, and (3) it would be a disaster for the general election - as he lacks Kerry's military aura that permits Kerry to appeal to voters far more hawkish than he is. On the other hand, while there is ample room to position himself as a more hawkish than Kerry, the biggest pool of voters up for grabs in the primaries are the uber-dovish Deaniacs. Considering this, its not surprinsing that Edwards will keep trying to shift the discussion back to the issues he can beat Kerry on: just about everything else.

GIBSON IS NO D.W. GRIFFITH


Reviews of Mel Gibson's Passion have come out. The consensus is it's bloody - very bloody, effectively 2 hours of watching Jesus getting tortured punctuated with leering glances from snaggled-tooth Orc-Jews. There is and pretty much little to no reason for anyone outside the faithful to watch, which is in some way a relief. I'd like to pretend I was interested in the artistic merit of the movie, but quite frankly that's like asking an African-American to appreciate the cinematic genius of Birth of a Nation.


FOR MORE...


Check out Kesher Talk, which has done an excellent job of compiling varying responses to the Passion from religious leaders, media, theologians and more.

A SLIPPERY WEDGE


My gut instinct tells me is that Bush's decision to endorse the FMA is a political blunder. This country is moving steadily and inexorably towards acceptance of gay rights. Leading up to Lawrence , the issue if anything was breaking for the Dems. The Mass Supreme Court ruling however shifted the issue to gay marriage, where most of the country simply isn't ready yet - and once more the GOP stood to benefit from cultural wedge issue. The FMA, however, is sufficiently radical that it erases that edge, and Bush's decision to endorse the FMA now makes it the centerpiece of the debate over gay marriage. Now, rather than have to defend gay marriage, the Dems can simply promote civil unions and stake out the procedural high-ground of protecting the Constitution from those who want to sully it with partisan politics. And in the end, I predict, the FMA project will only speed the nation on towards full equality for gay Americans.

UPDATE


Had I checked, I would have found that pundits across the liberal spectrum from TNR's Noam Schreiber to the Tapped's Nick Confessore have pretty much have a similar take on the issue. Oh well, there's goes the originality angle.

NOT SO FAST, GEORGE BUSH....


You've got to admire John Edwards' gift for political jujitsu, in framing Bush's attacks on Kerry as Bush "trying to decide who our nominee is." Considering how substance-free the Dem primary has been so far, its' probably his best shot at making a heroic comeback. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for Bush...sounds about right.

EDWARDS LIVE!!


I saw John Edwards live for the first time today at a "Round Table Discussion With Workers About Labor In America", which was held at the NYC joint board of UNITE . The whole event lasted little more than a half-hour, with Edwards giving a short speech on labor issues, and then taking questions from local UNITE members. Despite the relatively small gathering, I can't say this was the ideal forum for me to get a first glimpse of senators, given that the array of questions posed by the various garment workers pretty much all boiled down to asking how he would ensure their jobs (or even more impossible get their jobs back). Edwards however was impressive. He was able to pivot deftly from wonky recitations of his relevant micro-initiatives on college education, low-income wealth creation , economic revitalization of depressed communities, and tax reform to clear Clintonesque empathetic connection with questioners. More than anything else, I left the room feeling that any Democratic voter who thinks John Kerry has the best shot of wooing the blue collar swing voters essential to beat Bush is simply not paying attention. Bush's campaign is sure hoping that for at least two more weeks that continues to happen.

ON THE FMA, KRISTOL AND THE NECONS HIT ROCK BOTTUM


While the neocon's foreign policy agenda is highly divisive, it must be respected for at least being clearly thought-out articulation of core ideological principles. On the other hand, what passes for the neocon's domestic agenda continues to be pretty much a knee-jerk endorsement of GOP talking points. This intellectual bankruptcy hits a new low with the
Weekly Standard's endorsement of the FMA. First, Kristol and Joseph Bottum don't even to bother trying to justify why they are against homosexual marriage itself - not even the standard throw away line about how it undermines heterosexual marriage. Worse however, is their sloppy analysis of the FMA itself. The argument for why the FMA doesn't ban civil unions is ipsi dixit - it doesn't because the FMA's sponsors say so (to certain audiences). Let's look at the second sentence for a moment

Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor State or Federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups

If the FMA doesn't rule out civil unions, than what on earth does the phrase "or the legal incidents thereof" supposed to be doing? If the goal was only to address formal marriage, it would use the conjunction would be "and."


Kristol and Bottum, at least admit that the FMA stretches out to encompass civil unions, but then make the absurd argument that the FMA "merely requires them [legislatures] to specify the benefits they wish to give to relationships outside marriage--which is what civil-union legislation ought to do in the first place."


That can't be the case, however if we are to give any weight to the plain meaning of the text. The FMA plainly includes State laws in the category that cannot be construed to confer the legal incidents of marriage on unmarried groups. There is no exception made for explicit grants of "the legal incidents" of marriage to unmarried couples by state legislatures. Thus, say a state passes a civil union law that includes a provison that states "partners in civil unions can be named dependent's on the other partner's health insurance." Any state court that interpreted that law to mean what the plain language said would be construing the law to rquire health insurance copanies to confer a legal incident of marriage upon a non-married couple - and thus violating the FMA.


Even were the FMA written in a way that permitted legislatively created civil unions, it would still be an abhorrent attack on federalism, one that should make even the staunchest opponent of the Court's new federalism jurisprudence shudder (and all the more so a stanuch defenders of it, as the neocons are). The FMA, on the issue of gay marriage, effectively overrides ever states separation of powers and constitutional admendment process. Not only do the people of Massachusetts not get to decide whether or not to have gay marriage, they are also prevented from deciding whether or not they prefer for the decision to be decided judicially or legislatively. State Judicial decision that are radically outside the democratic consensus can be addressed - through state Constitutional amendments; and State courts that consisently impose radically anti-majoritarian views on their public can also be addressed - through the judicial appointments and/or election process.


But in a way, I'm more relieved than concerned by the neocons decision to hop on the FMA bandwagon Were the neocons to approach domestic policy as something more than partisan hacks, they may have helped craft a more narrowly tailored approach than the FMA that had a better chance of success - and that would be far worse.

NOT SO FAST, JOHN KERRY


Somewhere in the last week, John Kerry lost his landslide in Wisconsin, and was only able to squeek out a single-digit victory over John Edwards. Once again, the more voters got to know Edwards, the more they like him. Kerry is still the prohibitive favorite, but there's a glimmer of hope that Edwards can save the Dems from a Kerry nomination.

JOHN KERRY AND THE DEMS VIETNAM COMPLEX


David Brooks' analysis of the Dems' current internal struggles on foreign policy gets the politics right even if he misunderstands the underlying foreign policy debate.

Now, in the midst of the war against Islamic totalitarianism, the crucial question is this: Is the Democratic Party truly set to reclaim the legacy of Truman and Kennedy, or is it still living in the shadow of Vietnam?

If you talk to Democratic foreign policy elites in Washington and New York, you come away convinced that the party has recovered from Vietnam, and is ready to assert power, albeit in multilateral guises. If, on the other hand, you attend Democratic primary rallies, you come away convinced that the party is still, at its base, the Jimmy Carter party when it comes to global affairs.

And if you listen to John Kerry, you come away not knowing what to think. He seems like a man betwixt and between, unable to issue a clear statement about America's role in the world, and hence floating toward whatever is expedient at the moment.

If Kerry can speak the language of Truman and Kennedy, and stick with it, he will cross a basic threshold, and Americans will consider trusting him with their security. If he does not cross that threshold, all the personal heroism in the world will not be enough to get him elected.

As usual, things are more complicated than Brooks's pithy summarization. While it is true that the Dems grassroots is still firmly in the grasp of the Jeffersonians, its foreign policy elite is not necessarily on board with the War on Terror. Rather than being representing the party of Kennedy, the Dem foreign policy elite represents the party of Clinton - ranging from the Hamiltonians who reject the entire neocon "Democracy by Any Means Necessary" project to Wilsonians who support the ends but condemn what they feel are inconsistent support for nation-building and excessive reliance on unilateralism, with Globalists holding intermediate views still dominant. Thus, while the Dem elite is not hostile to the use of American force (unlike much of the Dem base), it is still, especially in a unilateral context, ambivalent. Which is why the muddled contradictions of John Kerry might all-too-well reflect where the Democratic Party really is today on national security.

THE REAL KERRY ON IRAQ


The real John Kerry was in classic form in Sunday night's Wisconsin debate. On the question of whether, in light of his vote authorizing the war he "felt any degree of responsibility for the war and its costs and casulties," Kerry uncorked a verbose response that went on for paragraphs (and required a follow-up that repeated the question) before finally hiding behind the statement that "The president had the authority to do what he was going to do without the vote of the United States Congress." And as usual, absent from his entire "there was a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it" shpiel was a clear statement of what Kerry would have done differently if he were president. For more, check out Andrew Sullivan's flaying of this and other Kerry double-speak at the debate.

A KERRY I COULD VOTE FOR


Barring an unprecented comeback by John Edwards (who I plan to vote for on Super Tuesday in the New York primary), I am rapidly approaching my first ever experience as a swing voter in an presidential election. Thomas Friedman, however, has stepped into to address what should be serious concerns by liberal hawks everywhere about John Kerry's commitment to win the war in Iraq by creating an idealized version of the likely Democratic nominee. Here's what Friedman's "John Kerry" would say about the war in Iraq in his Meet the Press interview with Tim Russert.

"Tim, before I answer that question, I first want to direct a message to the die-hard Baathists and Islamo-fascists who've been slaughtering Iraqis struggling to build their first democratic government. And my message to these terrorists is this: `READ MY LIPS — if I am president, I will not cut and run. I will not pull our troops out in the face of your intimidation the way Ronald Reagan fled from Lebanon.' Because that panicky retreat from Beirut in 1984 started us down this whole path, where terrorists believed if they hit us hard enough, we would run and they would get away with it. I hate how George Bush has prosecuted this war. I know I could do better. But I want every suicide bomber — from Bali to Baghdad — to understand one thing about a Kerry administration: `You can blow yourselves up from now until next Ramadan, but we'll still be in Iraq. You'll be dead, but we'll still be there. Which part of that sentence don't you understand?'.....

"Tim, I am no dreamer. I've seen a quagmire close up. We can't want a unified, decent Iraq more than the Iraqis themselves. Ultimately, they will have to step up and come together around a plan and a leader. But the terrorists should have no illusions, and the Iraqi people should have no fears: America under John Kerry will give them every chance to succeed. We will not run."

I've never heard this "John Kerry," but he'd get my vote for president. I have however, heard the real John Kerry speak on Iraq, and it has almost universally been rambling soliloquys that are backward-looking parsings of the senator's vote for a war he never really supported. Tom Friedman can write all the Wilsonian speeches for John Kerry he wants - but it doesn't change the fact that the likely Democratic nominee is a Jeffersonian, who will instinctively seek for America's foreign policy to conform to the rest of the world's precisely at a moment when the world needs America's unique vision.

BOYCOTT THE PASSION ?


America's favorite pop-Ortho Rabbi, Schmuely Boteach, argues that is precisely what Jews should do in response to Mel Gibson's soon-to-be released cinematic blood libel. According to reports, Gibson has cut out the "his blood be on us and our children" line from Matthew (in other words the "yes we did it, so don't feel bad about massacring us Christians"). This of course, is a step in the right direction, but clearly insufficient, given the film's retro-passion play approach that exacerbates, rather than mitigates the Gospels anti-Jewish polemics.


One positive step that might make a difference would be for Gibson to add a coda that addresses the film's potential to inspire modern day pograms. While its pretty clear Gibson has no intention of taking the ADL's preferred approach (Gibson personally speaking to the audience to inveigh against anti-Semitic reponses to the film), he has been offerred a more palatable alternative by Dallas-based evangelical minister Tom Evans, who suggests the film end with the following line: "During the Roman occupation, 250,000 Jews were crucified by the Romans, but only one rose from the dead." Obviously, as a Jew, I can't say I agree with the last sentence, but at least I can respect those that do. Then again, if Gibson had made a movie that had any respect for the historical accuracy, the point that Jesus was a Jewish victim of Roman tyranny would have made clear long before the movie's end.

ISRAEL CHANGES ITS MIND ON THE FENCE FARCE


Israel has decided not to present oral arguments at the International Comedy of Justice's hearings on Israel's border fence. Instead Israel plans to rely solely on a written brief in which it rejects ICJ jurisdiction over the dispute. While I have sympathy for the decision to not go along with the kabuki theater that is passing itself off as a legal proceeding, Israel may have been better off utilizing the forum as a opportunity to state its case, to steal the thunder of its accusers with a powerful display of the carnage that has driven Israel to build the fence. Either way, the real loser in this case is the movement to build real international legal institutions, which continues to get entangled with the Arab-Islamic anti-Semetism.

SLIMING KERRY


John Kerry has all but wrapped up the nomination and drawn to a dead heat with Bush in the national polls. All of a sudden, a salacious rumor about Kerry and an intern comes to light. How conveeeeenient.


I of two minds on this one. On the one hand, it would a shame for this country to decend once more into the Clinton-era slimepit of picadillo politics. The stakes are simply too high - we are after all in the middle of a war. Is our collective amnesia so great that we forget the "Wag the Dog" circus that spun Clinton's strikes against al Qaeda as a overreaction to the threat. By sticking with Kerry, Dem voters can send a message to the GOP that we're not playing by your rules any more.


On the other hand, unlike Clinton who brought far more to the table than his electability as a centrist governor, electability is pretty much all Kerry brings to the table. Without a doubt, the freshest domestic policy proposals have been put forward by Edwards, while the only serious foreign policy proposals came from the now defunct Lieberman and Clark campaigns. And for all of his foibles, Dean has provided a breath of fresh air. So, if the only reason to nominate Kerry is that he can beat Bush, and this most likely Rovian piece of "gutter politics" has worked as intended and therefore makes him less likely to beat Bush, shouldn't Dem voters have second thoughts about handing him the nomination? Is denying a victory for GOP tactics really worth risking a victory for GOP policies? It's gotten ugly and its only going to get uglier.



IN ALL FAIRNESS ......


I wasn't being particularly fair to Kerry in that last post, so I want to set the record straight. I think there are a number of areas where Kerry would do a fine job as president: fiscal policy, trade policy (an issue where I actually prefer him to Edwards, who has come out against a free trade pact with Australia. Australia?? Is there any country sufficiently developed that we can have free trade with?), and the environment (especially climate change). But with respect to foreign policy, I've made it pretty clear I think he'll be as succesful as Jimmy Carter circa 1979, and I find him as inspring as coffee table. But I'd much rather him go down on his merits than have the country distracted by weeks of tabloid nonsense.

THE TRAGEDY OF CLARK


There is no question that the Clark campaign, which met its inevitable doom last night, was a horrendously run campaign from a logistical and tactical perspective. There's been plenty already written about how the pros from the Clinton & Gore staffs failed to prepare their novice candidate from the pitfalls of the campaign. Just as worse, the insiders stifled the genuine grassroots energy surrounding Clark as an insurgent candidacy, focusing most of the time as presenting Clark as a "safe" Democratic option.

The tragedy is that Clark could have been so much more. Buried under media coverage of his argyle sweaters and fumbling on questions on abortion were foreign policy addresses that went past nostrums of multilateralism to flesh out concrete proposals for how to reconstruct international institutions to address the problems of a post 9/11 world. Based on his prior support for the war in Iraq and his Kosovo experience, Clark was uniquely qualified to make the Competence Critque of Bush's Iraq policy - one that focused on how Bush's inability to form effective coalitions or adequately prepare for nation-building. Such a campaign would have establish Clark as the clear alternative to Dean's pacifism and Bush's unilateralism. Was this really Clark's position? Like everybody else, I am guilty of projecting my own views onto Clark's tabula rasa, but it matches up with what he was saying before he entered the race.

Instead, as the campaign progressed, Clark increasingly drifted towards becoming Dean in combat fatigues - issuing sharply worded sound bites on how Hussein was "a made-up villain" or how Iraq "distracted from the war on terror."
In the end, the Clark campaign exemplified the Clintonian idea that the Democrats problem was the appearence of weakness on national security, as opposed to any substantive problems. Having given no substantive reason for his candidacy, Clark's campagin lost its raison d'etre with the rebirth of Kerry. And so, rather than having a real debate between an agressive multilateral approach to the war on terror and Bush's aggressive unilateral approach, the Dems instead offer their outdated, legalistic pre-9/11 approach, wrapped in the shiny package of Kerry's war record. But as Clinton himself noted, it is better to appear strong and be weak on national security than the other way around.

THE KAY REPORT CHANGES NOTHING BUT BUSH'S POLL NUMBERS


There is increasing evidence that The Kay Report, despite all White House spinning to the contrary,
has put a significant dent into Bush's poll numbers. The irony of this fact (as noted by Marshall) is that for anyone who had been following this story, it was old news. You don't have to look any farther than Kenneth Pollack (the leading ex-Clintonite proponent of preemptive war to remove Hussein)'s piece in last month's Atlantic, which detailed the extent to which 1) the CIA and the "professional" intelligence agencies overstated Iraq's WMD capacity, and 2) Bush hawks, due to both ideological predilections and cold political calculations overstated the already overstated estimate of Iraq's WMD capacity.



For the opponents of the war, the Kay Report has been manna from heaven. It is used to support their contention that Hussein was never a real threat, but instead "made a villain" by a bloodthirsty White House eager to distract the American people from (take your pick - the failure to capture Bin Laden, the economy, the extremism of Bush's domestic agenda) assorted failures of the administration. This dovish charecterization of the situation is even less accurate in hindsight than the Bushies WMD sales pitch was in foresight.



It can now be said, that despite other failures of the Clinton Administration in the Middle East, its containment policy of sanctions and limited air strikes succesfully disabled Hussein's WMD program. But it had come at a serious cost in terms of Arab and Islamic backlash against the U.S. for perceived harm to Iraqi civilians (caused by Hussein's callous manipulation of the oil-for-food program) and the ongoing military presence in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, by the end of the Clinton years, that policy was unraveling, due to gathering international opposition to the sanctions. Saddam had cleverly manipulated the oil-for-food program as a means fo currying French and Russian support for lifting sanctions, and were it not for the Bush Administration's militancy on the issue, the sanctions would have been removed. It is here where the much mocked WMD "program related activities" come into play. Hussein had laid the groundwork to jumpstart his WMD program the minute sanctions were removed, and funds from Iraqi oil to do so. It is here where the doves "lot's of bad guys" arguments go astray. Other murderous tyrants did not share with Hussein the proven intent and resources to acquire WMD. (Those that did - the mullahs of Iran and Kim Jong Il of N. Korea - were the other two on the much derided Axis of Evil). Thus, from the point of view of WMD, the war on Iraq was not, as the doves content unnecessary, but rather at most premature.


Of course,like a number of other, more eminent liberal hawks (Friedman, Hitchens, Berman, etc..), my support for the war was never about the imminent threat of WMDs, but based on strategic and moral merits of deposing the Hussein regime and building an Iraqi democracy in its place. The Kay Report does not change that calculation. What does matter crictically however, is the ongoing struggle to build a sustainable Iraqi democracy. It is on this critical fight that it not only too early too tell the success of the Bush Admnistation's project, but even more so the effort itself.


The more partisan liberal hawks (or ex-hawks) like Spencer Ackerman or Joshua Micah Marshall point to the June 30 transfer date as pretext for bailing, and sacrificing the neocon dream of Iraqi Democracy to short-term Rovian political calculus. Despite my skepticism of this administration, I'm not there yet. Bush may be a man of few principles, but he shown every indication the idea of America as freedom's champion in the world is one of those principles. The likely nominee of my own party, John Kerry, does not take the same view of America's role in the world. And as things stand right now, his nomination turns me into something I never imagined I'd become in a presidential election - a swing voter.

SHALOM NETZARIM


Ariel Sharon has begun a political earthquake in Israel by initiating a plan to uproot the Gaza settlements beginning this coming summer as part of overall strategy of unilateral separation.


Sharon has been moving slowly but steadily towards such a plan over the past year. First, by embracing the security fence (a policy that emerged as result of a grassroots centrist movement and over the objection of both left-wing and right-wing elites) Sharon enacted policies that for the first time matched his rhetorical abandonment of Greater Israel by beginning to carve a de facto partition of the West Bank. Second, in his December Herzliyah speech (and more explicitly in the trial baloons of the increasingly more relevant Deputy PM Ehud Olmert), Sharon clearly expressed the logic behind a unilateral withdrawal and his willingness to embrace it as an alternative to a negotiated solution.


Opposition to the Sharon Plan for Gaza has come from three very different directions. The first stream of opposition comes from the uber-doves, led by Yossi Beillin, who oppose unilateral measures based on their near- messianic faith in the ability of a negotiated settlement to transform the Palestinian Authority into a viable, peaceful neighbor. The second stream of opposition comes naturally from the Settler Movement (not to be conflated with the average Yossi who lives in the Jerusalem suburbs), who oppose any withdrawals, negotiated or not based on their near-messianic faith that G-d intended the Jewish people to return to the ancient land where our...enemies the Phillistines used to live (At least the fanatics in Hebron have a legitimate historical tie to the place). The third stream of opposition (and the only based on actual logic) comes from those such as Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom who oppose unilateral withdrawal because it will be seen by the Palestinians as a victory for terror over negotiation and compromise. (See Lebanon). The third group supports continuing a war of attrition until the a Palestinian leadership emerges that is serious about peace.


Despite the very real fears of a short-term increase of Palestinian radicalism (which can be blunted depending upon the way the withdrawal is handled), the most cogent criticism of the Sharon plan is why he waited so long. Sharon has gained very little by proposing such a plan now, rather than a year ago. In the interim, the shock of the reoccupation of the West Bank for the Palestinians has wore off, Sharon's approval rating have eroded in the absence of decisive moves to address the problem, and he has become embroiled in a murky corruption scandal.

Still, Sharon's pragmatic instincts have moved him inevitably towards unilateral partition as the only solution to the Palestinain problem. Despite his strong preference for negotiation, expect Shimon Peres's instincts to lead him there as well, and for a unity government to this summer finally undo one of the biggest blunders of Israeli policy in the past 30 years - the Gaza settlements.

FRIENDS, JOE-MANS, COUNTRYMEN, LEND ME YOUR EYES


I come not to bury Lieberman, but to praise him.


There are multiple reasons why Joe Lieberman's noble campaign for the Democratic nomination was doomed from the beginning. The primaries do not reward candidates like Lieberman who refuse to hew to party orthdoxies and exercise their independent judgment. Before the Dean implosion, it was noted that the governor had suceeded in masking his centrist record with radical tone and rhetoric, thus allowing a fiscal conservative to send leftist heart aflutter. Liberman, however, has combined centrist-leaning, but firmly mainstream Democrat policy positions with right-of-center tone and rhetoric, which makes for a forbidible combination in a general electorate, but a major weakness in the pander-thon of the Democratic primaries. Thus, Lieberman has been maligned by true-believer Democrats as a quasi-Republican.


Thus, despite Lieberman's positions on abortion, stem cell research, gay rights (not marriage granted, but that isn't a mainstream Dem position yet), working women (day care, family leave, etc.) he is lumped in with Pat Robertson & company. Why? Because of his 1) overt religiousity and 2) his efforts to regulate the entertainment industry. Thus, as applied to Lieberman and only Lieberman, keeping G-dtalk out of public discourse and letting 10-year olds buy the raunchiest video games on the market are limit tests to being a "true" Democrat. On socioeconomic issues, the differences are even more cosmetic and the charges more ridiculous. Lieberman is stalwart defender of the environment, and an advocate for tax fairness. Purists however wish to run Lieberman out of the party for taking New Democrat positions on trade and regulation.


There is one area, however, where Lieberman is tragically out-of-step with his party, and that is national security and foreign policy. Of the major candidates, only Lieberman has expressed the view that despite Bush's WMD shenanigans and post-war planning foibles, the war in Iraq was correct on both strategic and moral grounds. The reason is that only Lieberman viewed the status quo - with Hussein's genocidal tyranny intact, an increasingly crumbling and costly containment policy, and America's unhealthy entanglement with "moderate" Arab tyrannies such as Saudi Arabia - as untenable, and after 9/11, the failure to radically intervene unaccpetable. For the rest of the Democrats this is not the case. Even those Democrats, like John Kerry, who claimed to give conditional support to the war the problem was the perceived threat by Hussein to the status quo in the region, not the status quo itself, thus absent an "imminent" threat from WMDs, there would be no cause to act.


On the crucial question of whether 9/11 required a paradigm shift in American foreign policy, Lieberman is (I believe rightly) on the opposite side of the partisan divide from his fellow Democrats. However, there is still the second critical question of what such a new American foreign policy should look like. Here, Lieberman has begun to sketch out real alternatives to the more extreme unilateralist tendencies of the Bush Administration. Our political discourse on this critical issue is poorer for his departure from the primary stage.


Joe Lieberman has given the Democratic party a blueprint that is as sound politcs as it is policy: eschewing culture war by moving the "values" debate to a friendly terrain, combining fiscal responsible with progressive budget priorities, and a forward-looking Wilsonian foreign policy. For the sake of America, some day the Democrats might build of the foundation that Joe had laid.

NEW ENGLAND OVER CAROLINA


Just in the SuperBowl of course (although I'm afraid that might be the result in the nomination struggle as well). If you don't turn the ball over, you don't get blown out. Carolina's low-risk offense does a good job of holding on to the ball - so I don't see a blowout. However, I can't see the Panthers putting up too many points against a Patriots defense that is even better than the group that shut down the Rams 2 years ago. Final Score: Pats 20, Panthers 10...


IN RETROSPECT...


For about 3 quarters I had this game pegged. New England's D dominated and the Pats were able to drive just well enough to put up a couple of scores, but Carolina as usual broke a big play on offense for a long TD. Then Delhomme morphs into the second coming of Terry Bradshaw, Carolina's defense puts up the white flag, and the two teams put up 37 points in a quarter. For those of you who are keeping track, 3 of the last 5 SuperBowls have been classics.