Democratic Party in The Obamians, by James Mann

On Principles & Values: Trout Fishers: 1990s generation of foreign policy wonks

The Trout Fishers were the Democrats' up-and-coming foreign policy team. They were in their 40s and 50s, in the vanguard of figuring out what the Democrats should do in foreign policy once they returned to office.

The Trout Fishers represented the generation of Democrats who learned how to run foreign policy during the 1990s. They were eager to show that the Democrats were not a bunch of pacifists, that they understood national security issues and were willing to use American force where necessary --though sometimes in different ways and for different purposes than the Republicans. Among other things, the Trout Fishers believed in the use of military action for humanitarian purposes, such as to stop genocide or ethnic cleansing.

On War & Peace: Balance between MoveOn anti-war & Bush militarism

On the one hand, they were opposed to Bush's policies and to the worldview of the neoconservatives. They believed the Bush administration had vastly overemphasized how much the US should rely on military power--and, indeed, how much the use of force could accomplish.

Yet on the other hand, the Democrats did not agree with groups like MoveOn, which often leaped from criticisms of the war in Iraq to a broader denunciation of America's role in the world. The Democratic foreign policy hands were not opposed in principle to the use of force.