Sounds good to me. "Identity politics" and partisanship have been on the rise for over a decade, and have done more harm than good to the country.

The economic pragmatism of Roosevelt was right for that time, but its legacy has necessarily moderated itself as our economy has stableized. You work the political machine when you need to, as a matter of policy emergency.

Granted, I think we have a foreign policy emergency at hand, and we need to give the right-wingers the boot. But global strategy and international politics is a different creature than domestic politics. Foreign policy falls mostly within the exclusive realm of the president\state dept., where personal ideology guides policy.

But domestically, there is no such crisis that requires us to abondon plans for a better future for short-term realpolitik.

The looming Domestic problem of our time is the "red-state-blue-state" situation that is our country. It might seem idealistic to envision an attempt to move beyond it, but lets just stop and think for a moment - how scarily pathetic is it that we have more or less resigned ourselves to the idea of a bifurcated America as being the norm? Are we really ok with this for the next few decades? I'm not.

Foreign policy-wise, almost any democratic contender will do. Domestically, its a different story. Hillary offers a Do-Over of the 90's (not the worst thing), and Edwards is peddling protectionism and populism. Obama is certainly trying to sell an idea, moreso than a policy. I'm not put off by this optimistic vagueness. In fact, I think this might be the first time in a very long time that we actually had some breathing space here at home to reexamine ourselves socially, and stop playing politics like its 1999.

Sorry but Obama is just a clone of John Kerry without the wealthy wife. His "I know better than anybody" attitude will be his undoing plus he is a confirmed "flip flopper" on to many issues. Also, does anyone really think he has a chance of winning any states south of the Mason/Dixon line?

A good description of the Obama appeal, and maybe it's time for that now. Specific programs never get implemented in their entirety anyway, so I wonder why candidates talk about their programs as if they could enter them into a spreadsheet and produce the right numbers. "My administration will tax cigarettes at 43. 6 cents per pack and use the $1.62 billion in revenue to issue sliding scale vouchers at the rate of $128.86 per $1000 below the poverty level..."

Of course, the thing that scares people is the current administration, which operates according to vague optimism, backed up by appointing incompetent political hacks to cabinet jobs and never telling the public anything. When Obama puts out that non-specific, feel good message, he sounds somewhat like Bush.

Well said JW.

I share your concern over the horrible split domestically within the United States. It's one of the my biggest concerns. The utter hatred, distrust and nastiness between "the sides" is alarming.

Really, this split is a continuation of the cultural rift which started in the mid-'60s through late-'70s. We've been stuck there way too long. It infects every debate on every domestic issue in the country.

Let's see. Who are the players still?

Godless communist, anti-American queers and racial militants trying to destroy all that is wholesome in the country,

vs.

the Puritanical, crew-cut, non-thinking military expansionist, racist reactionaries trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant and send minorities back into slavery?

We're still fighting about Vietnam for God's sake. We need to get beyond this.

Everyone running for president at this time is a Baby Boomer. Hillary is an icon of that generation. Giuliani, McCain, Romney are similar iconic of their "side" in that generational split.

One of Obama's greatest assets is that he's young enough not to be a true Boomer, at least one who remembers sit-ins and Woodstock and draft dodgers and all that. He would not be such a lightning rod by just being young enough not to be able to be tarred with that.

What I found interesting about your post was your belief that the looming problem of our time is the "red-state/blue-state situation that is our country. I must say that I cannot agree with this. We live in a nation of over 300 million people which spans the width of a continent. We are a nation of imigrants of many races, enthnic groups religions ect...

The fact that we are not some balkanized mess of hundreds of warring interests is a testament to what we have going on here. The fact that we operate in a two party system that currently is almost evenly divided in popularity is of little concern to me. We see-saw back and forth between the two parties, as if instinctively, Americans avoid allowing either party to become too powerful. The old adage "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" is one I believe we should continue to adhere to. This concept has served us well for over two centuries, and I see no reason to abandon it. Vive la difference