January 26, 2004 - Tomorrow we begin that quadrennial ritual that culminates with the choosing of a President. In the chill of a New Hampshire morning citizens will leave their homes, go to the appointed places, and cast their votes to commence the process of choosing those who will contend in November for the Presidency of the United States. This year there is an incumbent seeking re-election and renomination by the Republican Party is not in doubt. That focuses our attention on the men seeking the Democratic nomination in this unique and tortuous process by which we define American democracy. There are, of course, seven remaining of the eight men and one woman who began as announced candidates. Barring an unseen surge by one or another in the snows, there are now three viable contestants for the Democratic Party’s nomination, John F. Kerry, Wesley K. Clark, and John Edwards.

From 1952 until 1992 there was a common thread of experience that defined their lives. They were, as President Kennedy said, tempered by their common experience of World War II. Even if their military service was limited to a Culver City movie set or deferred by time to the discipline of the Cold War, each President from Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush shared that defining experience. Not until the election of William Clinton was the torch passed to yet another generation – a generation for whom, whether they served or not, has been tempered by yet another war – Vietnam.

Of the Democratic contenders John Edwards is set apart, not by his courage or wisdom, but by his youth. He, alone, was born too late to have passed through the forge of Vietnam nor to have the heat of that furnace quenched in the cold and bitter peace that followed. His apprenticeship is not yet complete, his mettle remains untested. Of the three only John F. Kerry and Wesley K. Clark share with the incumbent President the passage through that fire.

The incumbent President has thrust us into yet another furnace in his amorphous and unending war of convenience against an enemy of shadows defined only by his deception and misdirection. Senator Kerry and General Clark share the experience that Lieutenant Bush adroitly avoided. Both have endured the heat of combat; have felt their hot blood flow from their wounds; and both have written to the families of those who fell under their command. Both were made steel by the process that George W. Bush lacked the courage to undergo and John Edwards lacks the experience to imagine.

America has need of that steel with which to make not an empire to rule the world but a compass to guide it. New Hampshire will begin to test the temper of that steel and the states that follow will complete the process and in November the torch which John Kennedy accepted from history will be passed on.