The president of the Progressive Policy Institute, Will Marshall, dropped by our office the other day to talk about his new book on Democrats and foreign policy, “With All Our Might.” His aim was to try to convince us that the Democratic Party’s “presidential wing”- that is, those looking at a run for the presidency in 2008 – supports a muscular, internationalist foreign policy. We asked about Senator Clinton, noting that she had voted for both the war in Iraq and the $87 billion to fight it. Mr. Marshall said he thought that the attacks of September 11, 2001, had been a formative experience for the senator from New York. He said he thought she recognized that America faces a real struggle against jihadists, and that the enemy isn’t, as some of the far-left bloggers seem to think, all just a figment of Vice President Cheney’s imagination.

So what are New Yorkers to make of the list of Democrats who voted against the confirmation of General Hayden to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency? It includes such possible 2008 presidential and vice presidential aspirants as Senators Dodd, Bayh, Kerry, Feingold, Obama, and Mrs. Clinton. The 78 to 15 overall margin by which General Hayden won confirmation was a sign of the overwhelming bipartisan support for the programs that General Hayden initiated as director of the National Security Agency. These include the wiretapping of calls between Al Qaeda affiliates and residents of America, and, apparently, the collection of a database of domestic call records. Polls show broad public support for both programs, which would have been more effective had they been kept a secret.

The 78 senators who voted to confirm General Hayden included nearly all the Republicans and plenty of moderate and even center-left Democrats. Senator Schumer, who has party-wide responsibilities at the moment, split with his New York colleague, Mrs. Clinton, and voted to confirm. We tip our hat to him; indeed the sweatband of our hat is getting frayed acknowledging Mr. Schumer’s growing gumption. Senator Levin of Michigan, who has been a pest to the administration on national security issues, voted to confirm. Senators Biden, Feinstein, Lautenberg, and the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, voted to confirm. Senator Lieberman, locked in a Democratic primary battle with an anti-war challenger, Ned Lamont, voted to confirm, in a vote that shows he is no summer soldier.

Yet such self-styled new Democrats as Mrs. Clinton and Messrs. Obama and Bayh joined with the hard-left caucus of Messrs. Feingold, Kerry, Wyden, Harkin, and Kennedy to oppose Mr. Hayden. Mrs. Clinton issued a statement complaining about NSA eavesdropping and collection of phone records. “At this critical juncture in our nation’s history, we need a CIA director who will exercise independence and not yield to the Administration, one who will be accountable and submit to the oversight of Congress when necessary,” Mrs. Clinton said. What an odd view of the role of an executive branch official, coming from a woman who supposedly wants to be president. The Hayden vote suggests that, the protestations of Mr. Marshall notwithstanding, the “presidential wing” of the Democratic Party has a long way to go before it closes what Mr. Marshall calls a “national security confidence gap” with the Republicans.