I looked around and realized that the left has very few reasonable heroes currently engaged in the public debate.

Who are the left's heroes? We all talk dismissively about how people like Kos, and the moonbats at Salon and the DU don't represent the majority of leftists, but honestly, who does?

Here's my challenge: who are the legitimate, sensible heroes of the left? Who is today's Scoop Jackson, our generation's John F Kennedy? Let me try to find one:

Would former Secretary of State Madeline Albright do? Well, there's this (among many other things):

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright insisted Wednesday that she was just kidding when she wondered aloud whether the Bush administration is holding Usama bin Laden captive, waiting to break him out at the best political moment.
...
But witnesses to Albright's comment said the ambassador did not appear to be joking Tuesday when she suggested President Bush may reveal bin Laden's capture as an "October surprise" before next November's presidential election.

Sorry Madam Secretary, you are ...

DISQUALIFIED for promulgating zany conspiracy theories.

Let's move on ...

How about former President Jimmy Carter? He's a respected elder statesman, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and largely considered one of the nicest guys to ever occupy the White House. But what does he have to say about the Iraq policy of a sitting US President in time of war?

"There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq last year. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
...
"Bush Junior was inclined to finish a war ... that his father had precipitated against Iraq. And his coterie of influential advisers, including [Vice-President Dick] Cheney and [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and [National Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice and [Pentagon Adviser] Richard Perle and [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz and others had long ago expressed publicly through their writings and statements a belief that we should overthrow Saddam's regime."

But, but ... but President Carter, it was the stated policy of the United States government under President Clinton to "overthrow Saddam's regime," not some plot cooked up by Bush's advisors. So, what we have here is a former President criticizing a sitting Administration by saying that they lied to the American people and took our nation to war in order to satisfy a family vendetta? Sorry Mr. President, you are ...

DISQUALIFIED for being a scurrilous old fool that promulgates zany conspiracy theories.

Ok, I'll take one more shot. How about a senior Senator with a 42-year track record of service to his country? How about Ted Kennedy?

Well, let's examine his rhetoric about Iraq. First he concedes that Saddam is "dangerous" and theorizes that attacking Iraq could "trigger Bahgdad's use of Weapons of Mass Destruction." Ok. He then goes on to state that the President waged war with Iraq for purposes of political gain, calls the threat from Iraq a "fraud" that was "made up in Texas," and finally comes out yesterday and has the good sense to call Iraq "Bush's Vietnam;" while we are in the middle of fighting this war. Um, for those of you who aren't exactly up on history, we lost Vietnam.

That's why Teddy K is ...

D-I-S-Q-U-A-L-I-F-I-E-D for hypocrisy, outrageous rhetoric and declaring an ongoing war a failure barely a year into the struggle.

So I'll just throw this out there again: who are the legitimate heroes of the left? Who? If not a senior Senator, a former Secretary of State and a former President, then who? Please tell me! Who is a legitimate, admirable, mainstream representative of your ideology?

I will say this - compared to these people, the Clintons almost look like the founding fathers.