From The NY Times
By Bob Herbert

There may be some grown-ups left in the Democratic Party after all.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did themselves and their party a world of good on Thursday night by conducting themselves with grace and dignity throughout their widely hyped debate in the celebrity-filled Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.

After the food fight in South Carolina and the speculation that these two history-making candidates genuinely dislike one another, the run-up to the debate had a touch of the atmosphere that preceded the Ali-Frazier fight in 1971.

To their credit, the candidates lowered the volume.

Mrs. Clinton got a big laugh when she said: “You know, it did take a Clinton to clean after the first Bush, and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush.” She intended the line to be funny. But it also addressed a profound truth about politics and government in the United States.

In his biography of Tom Paine, John Keane referred to a pamphlet that Paine had written near the end of his life and said:

“Paine here touched on a quintessential feature of modern republican democracy: it is superior to all other types of government not because it guarantees consensus or even ‘good’ decisions, but because it enables citizens to reconsider their judgments about the quality and unintended consequences of those decisions.

“Republican democracies enable citizens to think twice and to say no, even to policies to which they once consented.”

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