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January 20, 2007

And Then There Were...Well, A Lot

In what may have been the most anticlimactic announcement since the Coca-Cola Corporation pulled the plug on New Coke, Senator Hilary Clinton jumped into the arena today with her announcement she will seek the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. She starts off as the frontrunner, which may or may not be a bad thing; Democrats have historically been more amenable to surprises in their primary season, while Republicans tend to stick with whoever's turn it is. With the constant forward motion of the primaries, however, this kind of early positioning is vital because we may well know who the nominees are in little more than twelve months. In other words, if we are to select two decent candidates for the 2008 election (an unlikely possibility, in my personal opinion), we're going to have to make that decision before a vote is cast in a primary.

Personally, I'd prefer to see some reasonably-experienced governors over a Senator, if only because performance in the Senate doesn't seem to track well with work as a chief executive. On the other hand, there aren't many governors in the race: Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Jim Gilmore of Virginia, Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and Tom Vilsack of Iowa. OK, more than I thought (thanks to Think Progress for the list). Romney might be interesting, if only because he was a Republican governor in a strongly Democratic state, which suggests a lot more flexibility than our current chief executive, who was a Republican governor in a strongly conservative state, exhibits. Yes, I know the Texas legislature was controlled by Democrats at the time, but they were conservative Democrats. Still, I'll have to see a lot more of Romney before I can come to a conclusion on him. Then there's Rudy Giuliani, but while his experience running New York City may make him better qualified in the strictest sense than any other candidate, his civil liberties record in New York leaves me cold.

And, when you come right down to it, my vote in 2008 is likely to come down to what the balance in the House and Senate looks like. The past six years have been quite instructive in the dangers of single-party rule, something the Democrats themselves used to their advantage in the 2006 campaign. I'm sure the party will not feel similarly in 2008, but I certainly do. If the Democrats appear likely to hold the Congress in 2008, I'll push hard for the Republican. If the Republicans are poised to take back Congress, then I'll spend time and money on the Democrat. Who they are specifically matters less to me than ensuring that Congress will have every incentive to keep a tight rein on the executive.

I do like Thoreau's prediction, though: Hillary will win the nomination and the Presidency despite losing the popular vote. His logic? John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush, the three prior close relatives of former presidents to run, all lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote and the presidency.