Obama says ...

Obama's plan to challenge Washington's conventional thinking and create a new beginning in U.S. foreign policy includes:

• Ending the war in Iraq

• Ensuring there is no safe haven for Al Qaeda

• Securing loose nuclear material and renewing our efforts towards eliminating nuclear weapons and stopping the threat of nuclear terrorism

• Talking directly to friend and foe

• Strengthening the State Department to make diplomacy a priority

• Reversing Washington's reliance on secrecy by establishing a National Declassification Center

• Getting politics out of intelligence by giving the Director of National Intelligence a fixed term

• Uniting America behind a non-partisan foreign policy

Sounds like some good goals, reasonable goals. But as we've seen for years now, words mean nothing. What has Obama actually done that gives us a clue to how he will behave as President? I don't get a sense.

The word non-partisan hits a wrong note. There is no such thing, and doubly so (as if something that doesn't exist can fail to exist twice as much, but you get the idea) in today's atmosphere. Democrats should get over the idea they can pretend to be non-partisan. Instead of aiming for impossible sound bites, how about looking for the right things (for a change). An intelligence based, rational and well reasoned foreign policy with wide public support will satisfy me reasonably well, thank you very much.