Chris Dodd for President

CHRIS DODD is summoning up the spirit of JFK.

Speaking Saturday in front of Nashua City Hall, where Kennedy kicked off his 1960 presidential campaign, Dodd proposed a sweeping national service program, starting with high school and extending through retirement.

His own time as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic changed his life, says Dodd, who plans to make national service a signature idea of his presidential campaign. He and thousands like him volunteered because, all those long decades ago, a dynamic young president asked them to think beyond themselves. It's time for America to re-establish that ethic, he says.

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Campaign staffers for Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., flittered about Cedar Rapids Mayor Kay Halloran's dining room, nervously checking the time and periodically slipping out the door to make phone calls from the relative quiet of the front yard.

When Dodd arrived, the hum of conversation ceased immediately, and everyone crowded into Halloran's living room to hear him speak.

"There is more at stake now than at any point in history," the senator said. "We are precariously close to not getting it right and being the first generation of Americans to leave our children with fewer opportunities than we had."

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After following the coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, you could not be faulted for concluding that the race is about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and the remaining baker's dozen of declared candidates. You could not be faulted, but you would be wrong.

In spite of the worst efforts of those of us with press passes, political campaigns — most especially presidential campaigns — are not about the candidates. Presidential campaigns are really about the voters, the country and the future.

One candidate who understands that fundamental truth about politics is the talented senior U.S. senator from Connecticut and declared Democratic presidential candidate, Chris Dodd. After last week's Washington meeting of the firefighters' union, where 11 presidential candidates appeared and where nobody won more cheers and standing ovations from the firefighters in the hall than he did, Dodd put it this way: "Candidates always think elections are about them. They're wrong. Elections are about people."

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America can't pretend to be a moral beacon for the world as long as it rounds people up, holds them indefinitely and refuses to charge them in court. Even Nazi war criminals were given trials by the Allies in 1946 - though British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said they should be "hunted down and shot."

But suspected terrorists in U.S. custody are now denied the right of habeas corpus, the celebrated "great writ of liberty" that would let them challenge their detentions in U.S. courts. It is inscribed in Article I of the U.S. Constitution and was recognized in the Magna Carta.

Congress removed that right, in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, for any "alien ... detained as an enemy combatant or ... awaiting such determination." In the same act, Congress set up military commissions to act as tribunals. But these commissions don't allow an "unlawful enemy combatant" (left largely undefined) to invoke the rights laid out in the Geneva Conventions.

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America needs to step up its submarine production or it risks being overtaken by China, U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd said on Thursday.

The Democratic senator from Connecticut and presidential candidate toured the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard with union officials as part of a campaign swing through the Granite State.

"By the year 2010, the Chinese will have double the size of the submarines that we have," he told a small gathering of media and onlookers.

Dodd said the Chinese Navy will be larger by 2015. To address the problem, Dodd said he is lobbying the Defense Department to increase the number of submarines being built each year from one to two.

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