Ms. Edwards promising to swear off tangerines to stop global warming? (but not the private jets that most of the recent debaters arrived on). Sen. Obama eager to meet with everyone from Hugo Chavez to Castro to Bashar Assad, as if, like the NY-DC media, they too can be wooed and wowed with wit and panache? And as far as the candidates’ new ideas on the Middle East?

We should be talking with Iran?–but we are. We should be working with moderate Palestinians? But we are. We should get the UN involved and ‘regional neighbors’, but we are. We should get out of Iraq? But the surge is intended to bulk up the Iraqis to do just that in time.

On the one hand the Democrats aren’t offering much new about the old–except they mostly want to start leaving Iraq right now–while on the other, they are absolutely silent about the real dilemmas in our future: to what degree would they be willing to go into Pakistan to get al Qaeda, whom they assure us are growing and have been neglected by our war against them in Iraq? Exactly what programs–list them–would they shut down: wiretaps, Patriot Act, rendentions, Guantanamo? What exactly would they do if Iran continues to violate UN non-proliferation accords and heads to the next step of enrichment with more threats of Armaggedon?

In sum, what we are seeing is basically the outlines of a return to the world of 1993-2000, where we did little in response to terrorism other than in the context of utopian dialogue and refined diplomacy. For many Americans that may seem preferable to hitting the problem head-on in Afghanistan and Iraq–unless of course one believes that such a past policy was one of appeasement and its logical consequence

was 9/11.