Obama and Hillary voted against the Iraq supplemental this evening with 12 of their colleagues. Another excruciating vote in the midst of presidential politics.

(At leat) three tough questions for the candidates:

1. What's the right moral decision?
2. What's the right political decisions?
3. What's the right balance of 1 and 2 (and how do they influence each other)?

And the question for Cafe denizens (and the country) to wonder about: what was each of their answers were to each of these questions?

My head hurts.

Jim Sleeper makes the case for combining Gore's wisdom and Obama's idealism to create the ultimate Democratic ticket.

Obama to Stephanopoulos on This Week:

I think that I have the capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other.

Obama to graduating college students last week:

There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.

As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier.

Obama is calling for the cultivation of social empathy.

Read more »

The Nation's Ari Berman responds to M.J. Rosenberg's questions about his recent article "Hillary Inc."

Financial expert Robert Hormats, sitting this week at TPMCafe's Table for One, breaks down the costs of the Iraq war.

Reports from the Middle East.

Daniel Levy gives context to the fighting in Lebanon and Jo-Ann Mort looks for some hope in Gaza while Kassam rockets fall.

Democracy promoters, on the Left and Right, are forgetting something.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Steven Cook argues this week at TPMCafe's Book Club, much of the Middle East is and will remain quite stable. The overlooked factor? Powerful military institutions and traditions that bolster authoritarian regimes in countries like Turkey, Egypt and Algeria.

Joining him in the Book Club to debate this thesis will be Jason Brownlee, Yasemin Congar, Michele Dunne, Mona Yacoubian and Jon Alterman.

Welcome to the TPMCafe Book Club! This is where we regularly invite authors to come and discuss their most recent works with readers and invited commentators. Past Book Club authors include Thomas Frank, Anthony Shadid, Larry Diamond, George Packer, Ivo Daalder/James Lindsay, Robert Dreyfuss, Chris Mooney, Gene Sperling, Gershom Gorenberg, Peter Beinart, Kevin Phillips, Sidney Blumenthal, Reed Hundt, Anne-Marie Slaughter/John Ikenberry, Jonathan Cohn, and Daniel Gross.

This week we'll be discussing Steven Cook's Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey.

While talk of "democratization" and "instability" remains the centerpiece of our discussions of the Middle East, Cook's book is a reminder that authoritarian regimes in the region have developed complex ways of holding on to power through both the institutions and traditions of military control.

Debating and discussing Cook's thesis will be Jason Brownlee, Yasemin Congar, Michele Dunne, Mona Yacoubian and Jon Alterman.

-ahg