Maybe he'll be a threat, but we're not talking about Bill Clinton here; the man is pretty limited in the charisma department.

Bayh supports capital punishment, so that's a negative for me.

I support background checks if they can be shown to work. I do believe that law-abiding citizens have the right to own a multitude of weapons.

I'm troubled by Bayh's support for the Iraq invasion, but as Hillary supported it too, I might have to back a war supporter no matter which way I turn.

Charismatic? Maybe not, but neither were Lincoln nor Truman.

That's a ridiculous comparison. Lincoln and Truman were moral giants -- Bayh is a slick (!) political opportunist.

So are you saying that the Great State of Indiana was taken in by a slick political opportunist? Or is anyone who takes a page from both sides of the aisle an opportunist?

If the Evan Bayh of two years ago won the nomination in '08, Rothenberg would be correct. But Bayh is already lurching leftward in order to compete for the nomination. Soon he'll be nothing more than a John Edwards clone.

I've never liked Bayh. But to be honest, the political opportunist criticism comes out of what I've heard about his dealings with the INDOT while he was governor of Indiana... in perticular some small scale policy decisions that were basically just reduced to vote calculus. I don't have any problem with politicians whose positions are somewhat dispersed across the political spectrum -- in fact I think it can be a great thing, if it represents some legitimate views on what policies should be implemented. But with Bayh, I've never had the sense that this was the case.

By the way, Eric, I don't know why you think a leftist candidate can't win. Bush won this last election by moving to the right and energizing the base, and the Democrats probably would have won if they'd done the same thing... instead we ended up with this loser Kerry (another strict political opportunist, btw).

I never said an honest liberal can't win, although I think it's clear that the mean ideological position of the Democratic party is farther away from the average American than is the mean ideological position of the GOP.

Bayh can't win by moving left, however, because his charm is that he's a Midwestern, centrist Democrat. The more he cozies up to Northeast liberals, the more he loses that charm and looks like an opportunist.

And the Democrat base *was* energized last year, but by "anybody but bush" rather than by Kerry. In a lot of ways, the 2004 election was a mirror image of the 1996 election. Bush benefitted from being the "war President" just like Clinton benefitted from the economic boom of the 90's.

"the mean ideological position of the Democratic party is farther away from the average American than is the mean ideological position of the GOP."

Eric, if you trust the NYT's ability to do polling, then the poll numbers they released today are a fairly strong argument against that statement. For example...

"Four months after Mr. Bush won a solid re-election over Senator John Kerry, 63 percent of respondents say the president has different priorities on domestic issues than most Americans."

"58 percent of respondents said the White House did not share the foreign affairs priorities of most Americans."

The problem with the confidence of the MooreOn Left, Balta, is precisely that: "The polls show they hate Bush! Of course we'll win! Thaw out another Northeastern liberal...."

Along with what Paul said, that poll is merely a snapshot of public opinion of one Republican (albeit the most prominent one currently). I think the fact that the GOP has won control of the House in each of the last six elections (and the Senate in what--4, 5 of those?) is pretty good evidence that America leans more red than blue.

Eric,

If you want to say someone is a clone of someone else, fine. But it's really a cheap shot to say they are nothing more than that. Anyway, John Edwards is far more principled than George Bush, who I am now convinced was the architect of Abu Ghraib.

Lightweight. Loser. Our Junior Senator is an embarassment.

Such insight Leon.

Joel, I certainly meant no disrespect for Edwards as a person or even as a Senator. But as a candidate, he came off to a lot of people as a slick, pretty-boy politician.

And if you think Bush came up with the idea for making pyramids of naked prisoners, etc., you're about as delusional as those conservatives who were convinced Clinton was selling our national security to the Chinese.

Anyone who honestly looks at the current problems in Indiana cannot but find their apparent roots in Bayh's failures to either solve them or deal with them. Giving us Frank O'Bannon did us no favors. If records count(and they do in blogs but not in any other media, apparently)Bayh is not only a loser but a complete lightweight. Other than holding office could we point to any solid accomplishments he has managed?

Eric,

That's OK. Be in denial if you want. The specific idea of pyramids, forced masturbation, etc., no. However, the Bush administration clearly knowingly pushed our forces beyond the limits of legality. If I'm delusional, you are grossly naive. (Look at how the government rushed to scapegoat the lower enlisted forces. Look also at the stream of memos and the investigative report.)

Evan and the rule of law are somewhat in conflict. He took a solemn vow to judge the Clinton case (impeachment) impartially. Did he? No, he was one of the sheep. His word is no good.

Who claims that case was judged incorrectly?

However, the Bush administration clearly knowingly pushed our forces beyond the limits of legality.

Well that statement is a whole lot different from saying that George W. Bush was the "architect of Abu Ghraib."

Personally, I'm not of the opinion that we have to treat captured al-Qaeda members (or Iraqi insurgents, who aren't much different) with kid gloves or else we have lost the moral high ground. But I'm willing to agree that Abu Ghraib resulted from a lack of discipline and/or chaotic management, and the culpability for that goes all the way to Rumsfeld. (And since Bush is Rumsfeld's boss, he bears some of that responsibility too.)

I haven't advocated kid glove treatment. I've advocated that we comply with the law. I recognize that interrogation can't be plesant. (All of my roommates at the the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona were enrolled in the interrogation school, so I do understand some realities of life.) But also that we not kill people we interrogate. The fact is that several of those we questioned died. The fact is also that the Bush administration was prepared to cover up those deaths.

I'm always amazed at Republicans who spent years trying to destroy Bill Clinton for lying about sex, even under oath, but insist that a man who believes that we can hold American citizens indefinitely without trial or ship suspects off to foreign countries to be tortured is a man of great moral virtue.

I might add that I have never called for President Bush's impeachment. I simply want a much higher level of accountability.

but insist that a man who believes that we can hold American citizens indefinitely without trial or ship suspects off to foreign countries to be tortured is a man of great moral virtue.

On the former point, there are a lot of complicated issues to be resolved surrounding the legal front in the fight against al-Qaeda. I am giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt that we are holding suspects not in lieu of a trial, but until a trial can be held effectively and without risking intelligence assets, etc.

On the latter, I'm not well-versed on the accusations about torture by foreign countries, but I do know that statecraft in general--and especially fighting wars--is a messy business. If every President is to be held responsible for the "necessary evils" which occurred under his watch, I don't believe we could consider any of them to have "great moral virtue."

And to look at the "Clinton vs. GWB" moral comparison from another angle, I consider that President Clinton misused the powers of his office for entirely personal and selfish reasons, whereas President Bush is trying to do everything in his power from stopping another 9/11.

Eric,

I might give Bush the benefit of the doubt if the fight against terrorism were going to be of limited time duration. However, as the war may very well last for the next 50-75 years, I think we better be thinking about civil liberties now as opposed to after we all have national id cards, are required to have retinal scans, and find that there is absolutely nothing left in the privacy sphere. Precedents set against the bad guys may come back to haunt the general citizen.