"...The fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination is increasingly portrayed as one between romantics and realists.

But a realistic view of Obama would be that he is best placed to seize and shape a new world of such possibilities. He has the youth, the global background, the ability to move people, and the demonstrated talent for reaching across lines of division, even those etched in black and white.

He would, as Andrew Sullivan has written, ÒrebrandÓ America. Wieseltier dismisses such rebranding. But even the Papacy was rebranded in our times, by a Pole, and Poles then precipitated the fall of the Soviet empire.

A romantic view of Clinton might be that she has the guts and savvy to free herself of her husbandÕs coterie of the worldÕs rich and famous, with its dubious deal-making from Kazakhstan to Colombia, and ensure that a White House with a president and ex-president in it projects U.S. renewal rather than the tawdrier sides of Clintonism.

IÕm just not enough of a romantic to believe it.

Obama is the expression of a hybrid world whose promise outweighs its menace. He needs to recall what he once said: ÒNo president should ever hesitate to use force - unilaterally if necessary to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened.Ó

If he does, and a tough foreign policy team would help, hope and hardness will in time find a fecund balance confounding even to IranÕs mullahs...."

( Roger Cohen, writing in the New York Times).