Thanks, Lowell. The invasion of Iraq was enabled by the benign attention and implicit support of the most important and influential Democrats, especially President Clinton, who then and now had the greatest impact on public opinion among Democrats. I've been working as a volunteer for Barack Obama here in northern New Hampshire who, like Jim Webb and Robert C. Byrd, opposed the war from the start. But I was disapointed to read this morning in the Time mag piece that Obama would include President Clinton in his cabinet. That makes two of the leading Democrats who would include President Clinton in their cabinets. Might have to go back to Edwards and Mudcat.

to work on addressing poverty and disease around the world, such as in Africa?   He'd be great at that.  Or Arab-Israeli peace envoy?

I think the most important thing that has to happen between now and 2012 is the generational shift. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have to leave it behind. I first went to Mark Warner - and I believe I wrote the first article for an Alexandria, VA newspaper calling for Warner to run for President and I hope he still does - because I saw the new century opening up from either Mark Warner or Mitt Romney. I still do. This from the Governor's council meeting in '05 I think where they both brought forth their long-term visions; both were sound visions of encouraging youth education and both primarily management-based. The generational dynamics demand that the paradigm shift. For example, today in the NYTs and in the LA Times yesterday, Brett Favre was referred to as "the last American hero" (LA) and Tony Romo referred to as "The new Brett Favre" (NYTs). These are end-game comments - they mark the end of a generation of action of passion. They come because Tom Brady was referred to as "God" on the cover of last months' Sports Illustrated; in football, an old era and generation is ending and a new era and generation has started and it has been started by Tom Brady and Randy Moss. Likewise, generational dynamics can be seen as the difference between Perry Como and The Beatles; seasons pass. Today we are directly between seasons. Mark Warner and Jim Webb start a new season. It is not that the previous season was "bad" - just that new generations need to define themselves on their own terms. When I was writing about Warner and Webb two years ago Markos of DKos had a piece in the WaPost declaring a division in the Democrats: These divisions need to happen. In that same period he had a post in DKos asking "Won't these Clinton era Democrats ever go away? This is the representative voice of the new generation. The Democrats can define a new generation today with Warner, Webb, and others - I would include Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and possibly John Lynch of New Hampshire  who has defined his Governorship as across-the-isle like Mark Warner's and who is long admired Warner as Governor (I would include Mike Easley, Gov. of NC, as a "new Democrat" but I guess he is too "Southern" for the outside world). Jim Webb diametrically opposed the "Rubin Democrats" and their purpose in his rebuttal to Bush's State of the Union speech - this was implicit criticism of Clinton-era Democrats who detached Wall St. financial markets from the actual performance of the economy (in a Republican form). This new direction of Webb and Edwards, incidently, is not in opposition to all Democrats. It is Old School and pre-Clinton. The Clinton administration directly opposed the older and wiser voices of their own party; John Kenneth Galbraith, a party icon from the Kennedy days, wrote a book in 1992, "The Culture of Contentment" in direct opposition to Clinton's attachment to the rich (he wrote late in life that he only briefly met Clinton and Gore and they basically had no use for him) and they opposed the great George Kennan's who opposed the expansion of NATO first proposed by Newt Gingritch in Contract for America and applied by both Clinton and Al Gore, calling it "a mistake of historic proportions" and they injured the good work the venerable Sam Nunn had done in nuclear disarmament by pressing NATO into Russian neighborhoods. Webb and Edwards honor the Old School and the old traditions. In August I interviewed Sam Nunn's chief in Atlanta and was told that he is so dissatisfied with the line up of both parties that he may enter as a third party candidate in January. What a Democrat needs to do - and now it should be Edwards if Obama is going to bring Gore and Clinton into his cabinet - is afirm the old traditions which Galbrith, Kennan and Nunn represented. To bring back the character of the Old School and leave the Clinton-era behind.