Everybody Loves Joe! And Nation-Building!

Walking through the 16th Street Mall, harrassing Democratic delegates, I found a whole lotta lovin' for Sen. Joe Biden. Hastily-bootlegged buttons and T-shirts are easy to spot (including one design that salutes "Barak" Obama), and the delegates I talked to are grooving on Joe's foreign policy experience.

But doesn't that experience include votes for the Iraq War? Clinton Illinois delegate Miguel Delvalle waved that off. The reporting and intelligence available at the time can explain why Biden voted for the war. "You can understand why Joe, or Hillary Clinton, and number of other Democrats voted for it." What did he want President Obama to do about Iraq? First of all, work with Gen. David Petraeus.

Kathleen Driscoll, an Obama delegate and military wife from Montana, pondered what the Obama-Biden team could do to keep America safe from terrorism. More troops in Afghanistan and a greater focus on the Phillipines. "You don't hear enough about that country," she said. Has Iraq made her more nervous about nation-building? Yes: The mistake we made was not learning more about the culture before we tried it.

So, not teeming with non-interventionists here. Off to listen to Madeline Albright and Hernando De Soto.