Other than the ending of the Clinton campaign, it's hard to find much to be optimistic about. But journalist Seymour Hersh has added to my gloom.

Hersh was a speaker last weekend at the convention of our trade organization, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, in Philadelphia. Hersh is an Obama supporter, but he sees plenty of pain ahead, regardless of who is elected president.

In Iraq, "there's just no way out," he said. "How do you fix it?"

If we leave quickly, he said, do we really think all the Iraqi factions will come together? "They've been killing each other for years," he said.

He worries about America's moral obligation to the Iraqis, "to this country that we destroyed."

He worries about the toll Iraq is taking on our troops. "We haven't begun to see" the harm done to our own soldiers, he said. Anxiety is so high among US troops in Iraq that some are being given the sleeping medication Ambien, he said.

He worries about our future in Afghanistan, where, he said, we've killed too many people.

"They're more afraid of us than they are of the Taliban," Hersh said. "I don't see Afghanistan in any way being successful in the short term."

And then there's Iran. For more than two years, Hersh has been warning - in long, detailed pieces in the New Yorker - that the US is preparing to attack Iran. President Bush, he said in his AAN talk, is "convinced that nobody will do what needs to be done to Iran besides himself."

"I don't think there's much we can to do stop him," he said.

He agrees that there are similarities between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War. But, he said, there's one big difference: despite the violence we inflicted on Vietnam, the two countries have been able to work together. He holds out little hope for that result in Iraq. Catastrophes like Abu Ghraib did untold damage to Iraqis' opinion of the United States, he said.

"We're living in a dream world," Hersh said, "if we think the election is going to change things."

We also got a little impromptu political message from Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. Just a few hours earlier, Hillary Clinton had conceded the Democratic presidential nomination, and given Rendell's support of Clinton, she was on the mind of everybody in the room.

Should Obama pick Clinton as vice president? Yes, Rendell said. And he disagrees that it would be a sign of weakness, a sign that Obama buckled under pressure from the Clinton camp. To the contrary, said Rendell; it would be a sign of strength, that Obama was willing to bring in someone who has disagreed with him.

And Rendell pointed to Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lincoln biography, "Team of Rivals." In choosing his cabinet, Lincoln picked not just one but three people who had campaigned against him. Lincoln welcomed dissent, said Rendell, but was also able to chart his own course.

Is Clinton interested in being appointed to the Supreme Court? No, Rendell said. She has a lot of years left in the Senate and thinks she can do more there than on the court.

Is Rendell interested in being Obama's running mate? No.

At least that's what he said.

No surprise, right? The MCC trustees got together again Monday afternoon and agreed to keep disagreeing. So they'll start the presidency search all over again. And it's entirely possible that a year from now, they'll still be deadlocked.

The community owes a huge debt to the five trustees who opposed giving the presidency to Republican insider Bill Smith. You watch, though. I'll bet that the pro-Smith leaders have something up their sleeves. Why else put everybody through this?

And I'd love to find out what kind of hold the Republican Party has on some of the Smith five. It must be huge to keep them from doing what is clearly the right thing.