See, I’m not opposed to this, I’m not opposed to this at all:

U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel writes in a new book that the United States needs independent leadership and possibly another political party, while suggesting the Iraq war might be remembered as one of the five biggest blunders in history.

Well, yes on both the former and the latter.

The problem, I think, is that when we talk about a “bipartisan unity ticket,” as Hagel does elsewhere in the article, a lot of people are thinking about Joe Lieberman. Hey, here’s a traditional workingman’s Democrat who is tough on terror and wants more war in the Middle East - and we think that’s splitting the difference.

Hagel, in fact, may be the opposite of that - someone who thinks we’ve been plagued these past few years with “a reckless foreign policy … that is divorced from a strategic context” - and who, ostensibly, would take a different tack. Any new party, I think, would have to be founded on that view - not the Republicans “all war, all the time,” nor the Democrats’ “more war, sure, but better war” approach. Actual strategic context. Now there’s a switch.

The problem, of course, is: What would such a new party stand for, socially? What of Teh Dreaded Queers? Or abortion?

So O.K., maybe it’s a pipe dream for now. But one of these days, maybe it will happen. As Hagel suggest, maybe it has to.