Confession: It's good for the soul

The Oregonian's Steve Duin reminds me of something I meant to mention in my recent posts about Gordon Smith's expedient change of heart on the Iraq war:

Duin points out that John Edwards showed integrity on this subject--and he showed it over a year ago. Both are important points: Edwards not only admitted that he was wrong to have supported Bush's invasion of Iraq, he came clean at a point where there was still considerable political risk for saying so and at a moment that had no obvious political advantage for him. He came clean on Veterans Day 2005 because it was the right thing to do.

I stand by my prediction: I think it's going to be a tough row to hoe for any 2008 Democratic presidential candidate who supported the war unless they--all right, I'll say it: unless she--does more than merely surf the latest polls and claim that the war is now a disaster, and instead goes the distance and admits that it was a mistake from the beginning.