And yet, I have a soft spot for Dick Gephardt. He just seems more decent than the other Democratic candidates and seems to understand the nature of the threat we are facing in a deeper and more instinctive way. His support for the Iraq war resolution last fall was quite genuine, even if he has wavered somewhat on it since. Today in the question-and-answer period he said, “We cannot allow a WMD to be used in this country. It CANNOT happen. And I feel this responsibility keenly. We must do everything in our power to keep that from happening.” Now, obviously at some level this should go without saying, but other Democratic candidates don’t often say it and when Gephardt does there is genuine passion and conviction in his voice. About 9/11, he said, again quite passionately, “It was all our faults. We all failed. We had warning. Khobar Towers. The U.S.S. Cole. The 1993 World Trade Center attack. And none of us believed it would happen here and it did. It was the ultimate wakeup call.” Gephardt at least has heard that wakeup call much more clearly than the rest of his party.