Picture of JFK Campaigning in a Factory.

Yes, last night's debate/forum was a huge improvement on previous outings, and Tavis Smiley and the panel of journalists he had gathered put Brian Williams and the rest of the beltway star interlocutors to shame.

And yet, for those of us who, without hesitation, call ourselves liberals, progressives or otherwise acknowledge our left leanings, something has been missing from this too early campaign for who will be the Democratic nominee for President in the 2008 election.

Well, look no further for someone to define what that missing something is. And irony of ironies, you have the Washington Monthly to thank for this, a publication that has sometimes been less than comfortable embracing the liberalism inherited from the 1960s and 70s, not that Charlie Peters, its editor for many years, wasn't a genuine liberal. But if you were reading the magazine in the 1980s and 1990s, you'll know what I mean.

Well, someone at the Washington Monthly had the brilliant idea of asking Theodore Sorenson, John Kennedy's chief speech writer, whom, as the Monthly points out, Kennedy called his "intellectual blood bank," to write an acceptance speech for whomever addresses the Democratic convention next year as its presidential nominee.

Sorenson is now retired. Over the years, every appearance of his, every published word of his, has reminded me of what it was like living in an America where "liberal" wasn't a dirty word. Perhaps that's why Ted Sorenson has been far less visible as a media presence than we had a right to expect, given his historic role with both John and Bobby Kennedy, his intelligence and knowledge of policy, and the power of his writing.

You will see by the speech he has written that Ted Sorenson has been paying attention.

Here's his opening paragraph, how he would like the Democratic nominee to frame the kind of campaign that is worthy of the demands of the time we're living in, and worthy of American voters, and which he or she intends to wage with or without the cooperation of the Republican nominee, whomever that may be.