In "The Democratic Moment?," Lawrence Haas (currently Vice President for Policy at the non-partisan Committee on the Present Danger and previously, Communications Director to Vice President Al Gore and, before that, as Communications Director to the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton) says that for the Democrats to take advantage of the Bush Administration's fumbling and win the presidency next year, the party must adopt a mind-set about national security that reflects three basic themes:

1. a firm belief in the superiority of U.S.-style freedom and democracy over all other alternatives,

2. a clear-eyed understanding of the dangers that our enemies pose to our safety and well being, and

3. an eagerness to grab the reins of national security and serve as America’s commander in chief.

The contrast to which this post's title refers is that between JFK's words and those of current Democrats, including his brother:

“Let every nation know,” the new President proclaimed on January 20, 1961, “whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” John F. Kennedy was strident on that bitterly cold day because he knew that our cause was just, that our system of freedom and democracy was far superior to the Soviet model we were confronting around the globe. Forty-three years later, U.S. troops were engaged in Iraq when a prisoner abuse scandal erupted at Abu Ghraib. Ted Kennedy, the slain President’s brother and one of Washington’s most influential Democrats, walked to the Senate floor to offer his take. “Shamefully,” he suggested, “we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management—U.S. management.” Unlike his brother, this Kennedy could find no moral distinction between a regime that tortured its opponents as a matter of state policy and a nation that (notwithstanding the problems at Abu Ghraib) had sought to liberate its people. In a sense, the rhetoric of the brothers Kennedy serves as bookends to the transformation of Democratic thinking about America, its place in the world, and the justness of its cause. Of late, in their rhetoric and behavior, too many Democratic leaders, strategists, and activists have portrayed America more ambiguously than clearly, with more hesitation than pride, and with more confusion than certainty. In doing so, they have raised public doubts about their willingness to defend the United States with all vigor necessary. In his moral confusion, Ted Kennedy was not alone. As Democratic anger over the particulars of the Bush administration’s war on terror and invasion of Iraq grew, some Democrats lost sight of the bigger picture. In mid-2005, the Senate Democratic Whip, Richard Durbin, compared the way American soldiers were treating captives in the War on Terror to the treatment meted out by “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others.” Moreover, Democrats have cavorted a bit too closely with those willing to blame America for the hostility of its enemies. In 2004, the party’s congressional leaders attended the Washington opening of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a docu-fantasy that painted Iraq as a happy playground that the United States ruined by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. (Whatever one thinks of Bush’s decision to topple Saddam, or of America’s mismanagement of the aftermath, no serious person could portray Saddam’s Iraq in that way.) And, at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, former President Jimmy Carter invited Moore to sit with him for all the world to see. A year later, Democratic activists linked up with Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq and who, in her travels across the nation, said America “is not worth dying for,” called Bush “the biggest terrorist in the world,” and called the 2003 invasion of Iraq a secret plot to help Israel. Moveon.org, the on-line grassroots group on which Democrats have become so dependent, helped to coordinate her travels, while the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank where many ex-Clinton administration officials work, publicized her exploits.

Since starting American Future blog in September 2004, I've raised the same issues, but never all at once and in one place. Haas has done it for me.