Expect a 2008 presidential debate that takes a sharp turn toward home. The Iraq war is winding down.

Listen to the squabbling among politicians and especially President Bush's own defensive banter. The clucking and pecking are about when and how to get out of a disaster, not about the application of military force to a list of goals glaringly unmet 54 months after invasion.

They are counting down a decent interval as they inch toward the exit. This president and his White House are utterly clueless about what to do in Iraq. The administration's military advisers — on active duty and comfortably retired — are bitterly divided. Commanders in the field are game to press ahead, but the Pentagon brass inventory an exhausted fighting force and depleted supplies.

This week, one general and one ambassador will make the case that everything is going fine, if the nation has patience. Their report comes after admirably candid assessments by the congressional Government Accountability Office and other independent voices about the lack of progress.

The president mumbles about success without ever defining it, let alone demonstrating results.

An August visitor to Seattle, Thomas Ricks, the Washington Post's military writer and author of "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq," left behind an informed prediction: good news about tactical security gains and bad news on strategic benchmarks. The GAO confirmed the latter.

Ricks expects the U.S. military to be in Iraq for years, with preventive duties he called the three nos: No genocide, no regional war and no safe haven. Troop numbers will drop, with good news or bad. It is all a matter of degree and timing.

If the president gropes for a Vietnam analogy again, I'd suggest Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki be careful starting his car. He is annoyingly independent of U.S. patrons, and someone in Washington will start muttering coup behind closed doors. Remember those pesky Diem brothers?

As the war winds down, the U.S. has moral burdens of its own making. This country has diplomatic and financial responsibilities toward a refugee population it helped create. An even more specific obligation is the duty to protect Iraqis who worked for Americans at great risk to themselves and their families. They are not safe and should be resettled here.

How will this country behave as it becomes a spectator to a civil war it could not prevent? Iraq will not leave the national agenda, but the nature of the challenge will change.

Bush is asking for another $50 billion to pay for the war. Sure, why not? It's all going on the credit card. Same as the tax cuts and other deficit-ballooning budget items.

I am expecting two disparate groups to pay more attention to the nation's finances, and start declaring their economic self-interests. If the rest of the world — foreign central banks — stopped buying our bonds, and financing our debt, the joyride would come to an abrupt halt.

In the past, the sneering rejoinder has always been, "Where will the money go?" The disturbing reply — in part because there is a credible answer — is the euro.

A second group to watch is the Millennial Generation, the 20-somethings I suspect will start voting their economic interests. Most important, in defiance of generations of political-science statistics, I expect them to start voting in attention-demanding numbers.

Recent U.S. Census figures saw the number of Americans without health insurance grow to 47 million. Buried in the statistics were increases of higher-earning middle-class workers without health insurance, and an increase in the number of young adults who feel the lash of poverty.

The workplace has changed. Old assumptions about benefits — health insurance and pensions — are disappearing among the small- and middle-size employers that drive job creation. Everything baby boomers largely inherited on the job is eroding in the private sector.

Look for a millennial reckoning. The country is broke and bogged down in a war that made more enemies than friends. A generation has seen its environmental values belittled and denied. Harsh lessons of a global economy are complicated by an arrogant foreign policy.

No, the Iraq war is not the only topic in 2008.

Lance Dickie is a columnist for the Seattle Times.