To pick up on Byron’s point: just how many of the 80,000 people at Invesco Field tonight were even alive when FDR was president?

The Democratic Party is, in name only, the party of FDR and JFK. But in its philosophy it is, particularly on national security matters, a dramatically different party. JFK, after all, ran on the supposed “missile gap” with the Soviet Union. He spoke about the rights of man coming not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God. And it was President Kennedy who famously said “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

It is revealing that Senator Obama would have to reach back almost five decades to invoke a Democrat on national security issues. But whether he likes it or not, and whether he admits it or not, the modern-day Democratic Party is, on national security issues, the party of McGovern and Carter, Mondale and Dukakis, Clinton and Kerry, Reid and Pelosi. Given that litany of names, perhaps it is understandable why Obama would invoke JFK and FDR.