Cold Comfort

Liberalism's hawkish past is less useful as a guide to confronting future threats than Peter Beinart would like to believe.

By Fred Kaplan

John Kerry lost the 2004 election, it can reasonably be argued, not because of abortion or gay marriage but because of his own indecisiveness. Too few citizens trusted him with the nation's security in a time of terror (and, face it, many of us who voted for him did so with qualms). In the subsequent year-and-a-half, George W. Bush has squandered the advantage he held on that score--and wrecked the Republican Party's broad lead on military matters, to boot--but the Democrats have yet to devise an alternative vision. Peter Beinart, former editor and now editor-at-large of The New Republic, lays out his version of one in The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.