AT THE END OF THIS WEEK, GARANCE FRANKE-RUTA AND I will have an online discussion debating whether Howard Dean would have been a better Democratic presidential candidate than John Kerry. This will be posted on the American Prospect‘s website.
She’s with Kerry, and I believe Dean could and would have beaten Bush. I’ll post the link when the virtual debate is completed.
The last several days in the hills above Santa Fe have been useful in that the trip has given me some much needed distance from the post-election trauma of some and euphoria of others. I look forward to hearing from readers after I post some of my thoughts on what Democrats need to do to recover after this poor performance — and why Democratic success is ultimately important to the Republicans, whom I believe are facing some interesting internal civil wars of their own.
I left Santa Fe this morning at 4 a.m. to make a 3 p.m. meeting in Washington to discuss with some other key foreign policy players in town what can be done differently by progressives these next four years. I have been in meetings the rest of the day and will have more time to post serious commentary tomorrow.
For what it’s worth, I did seem to convince a few in the very interesting group of leaders from Sandia National Laboratories that Sandia can apply technology to both war-fighting needs of the country but also trust-building challenges between warring parties. In fact, Sandia has a very important set of competencies in “trust-building” that are not well-appreciated.
More on this later as I think it is a very important subject, and I was thrilled to discover that even among those who build, maintain, and develop nuclear weapons systems that there are rich and diverse political debates about war and peace, about strategy, and about what kind of leadership is best for the nation.
While Bush supporters aren’t endangered at the nation’s weapons laboratories, George Bush certaintly has no monopoly of support among nuclear engineers.
— Steve Clemons
