Today, the Democratic party mainstream has its values, its instincts, and, as usual, more than its share of 10-point programs. It even has its "isms," represented by its leading troika: the pragmatism of Hillary Clinton, the idealism of Barack Obama, and the populism of John Edwards. Yet its intellectual reservoir has shown itself to be lacking in depth and confidence. Today's Democratic mainstream is no more willing or able to stand up to the party's present leftist insurgency than the older mainstream was to stand up to the New Left. The tenor of the current left is best captured by something Lionel Trilling said in 1949 about conservatives: They do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas."

Apologies have become the rage, but not done well, they don't serve the purpose. It takes a strong man to say “sorry”. Tinpot creatures with puffed up vanity cannot summon up the pride or courage to apologize.

Sadly, though, apologies have become the rage. Japan doesn’t demand an American apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but China feels Japanese expressions of regret for the Nanjing massacre are not sufficiently abject. South Korean comfort women want apology and compensation, and the Irish grumble that Tony Blair’s comments on the potato famine were far too glib. It’s an unending process with no sure means of identifying either the magnitude of crimes or the sincerity of apologies. Given the scope for political opportunism, it would be far better to draw a curtain across the past and work to secure the future.

The conventional wisdom holds that a McCain vs. Obama general election would be one of the most civil in recent memories, with two likeable candidates talking about politics on a higher level. One guy would give hundreds of speeches about hope and change; the other guy would talk about sacrifice, character, and integrity. All of that is true.

But that should not obscure the fact that there are, as McCain said in his CPAC speech last Thursday, big differences between the parties on the big issues, or that these two men have had some frosty personal interactions in their short time working together in the Senate. So it may be civil and tough at the same time.