It's absolutely crucial for the Democrats to have a sense of their history, of who they are, in order to be able to project their values and stand up for them.

But presidents matter. That's one of the biggest lessons I learned being in the White House.

On the contrary, it might even be a projection of what the truth is of the Bush Administration's complacency and ineptitude on the terrorism in its first 9 months in office.

Clinton took very tough decisions on the economy.

Bill Clinton was in the line of great progressive presidents who faced the realities in his own time and applied innovative solutions to problems.

The George W. Bush universe of threats is a constantly expanding universe as he moves to politically higher ground, escaping from failure after failure. He's not only radical, but the consequences of his radicalism have been catastrophic.

I call George W. Bush a radical because he is undertaking a fundamental transformation of our Constitutional system of government and of our longstanding policies that have been accepted for literally generations. He thinks to concentrate unaccountable power in the Executive. He thinks you alter the laws so that, as Commander in Chief, he can determine, under what he says are wartime conditions, what the laws are, which laws should be enforced, and declare by fiat what our policy should be, even abrogating longstanding international treaties.