It is a defining moment, this reunion of the giants of the Democratic Party – solving an international injustice that can occur when a war is not ended. Bill Clinton has risen from the “political yesterday” firmly into the immediate political moment and has made up with Al Gore as, as he delivers back two intrepid journalists who strayed over the border into North Korea. That they were arrested by the secretive state is unsurprising. For them to be held in a prison in this way of course was not just, but prison without trial is not something that America has shied away from in recent years as we are all too familiar with – the orange jumpsuits that exclude individuals from the freedoms enshrined in the very word “America”.

If this is not a defining moment for everyone in the world, maybe that is understandable, but it certainly is a defining moment for both the Clintons, of course for Mr Gore – who’s journalists seem braver than any in this moment – and for President Obama – it signals a return to grace in American diplomacy.

If a visit from a past president was the respect for existing that Kim Jong Il’s North Korea needed to return to the nuclear table and find a way out of the game of atomic chess North Korea appears to be playing for “legitimacy” – then so be it. One should remember that although GW Bush idiotically labelled North Korea effectively with the same consideration that he used for terrorists – reduced this small, proud and broke country to negative options.

President Clinton, by brushing aside instincts of fear for his own safety that the reputation of North Korea may excite including the barbs aimed at his wife before this extraordinary meeting has achieved a better equilibrium from which it is possible to negotiate. The door is opened enough to pass information rather than insults.