...Read this one: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama. I'm sure many of you have already enjoyed this piece by Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic, but of everything I've read about this much-talked-of contest, it's the best. It's about how one candidate has the ability to fundamentally disrupt the now petty arguments we've been having as a nation since...well, since around 1961--the year Obama was born, but just a few years before Hillary cut her teeth entrenching herself, very vocally, on one side of these arguments.

Perhaps it should not be expected that we have a President of the next generation already--we've only had 2 Baby Boomers, and before that we had no less than 5 elected members of the "Greatest Generation." But last night, Hillary said something that really stuck with me. One of her biggest applause lines was "It did take a Clinton to clean (up) after the first Bush, and I think it might take a second one to clean up after the second Bush." If you think about it, this endorses a terribly anti-progressive view of the future, a cyclical one actually. By Hillary's logic, after her presidency (which could extend until 2017), we'll be no further as a nation than we were in 1989, and still mired in the exhaustive debates of the Boomer generation that Sullivan details in his article.

You can also imagine the familiar cultural parameters of a dialogue between party nominees John McCain, who was tortured for 6 and a half years in Vietnam, and Hillary Clinton, the conflicted former protester and wife of a draft dodger.