Have you seen the coming attraction trailer for "Democratic Presidential Nomination '08: Al vs. Hillary" yet? It just opened yesterday, in the dueling speeches by Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.
And you can already see the two different approaches.
Gore came out swinging, charging the president with breaking the law "repeatedly and insistently." He said that Bush had mounted a "direct assault" on the system set up for obtaining warrants for spying, and concluded: "A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government."
In the other corner: Hillary.
She, too, came out swinging, claiming the Bush administration would "go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country."
One of?! I suppose we were lucky she didn't go Full Senate Jacket on us, with something like: "If you were to make a list of the worst administrations, the present one could certainly be among the ones you could consider including on that list."
If there are still any left doubting that Hillary would be a good senator, she has certainly proved them wrong. She is a senator through and through. And she is just one more example, as if we needed one after John Kerry, of why sitting senators almost never become sitting presidents.
We'll see how the race develops, but right now I'd put my money on Gore. He didn't just get rid of the beard, he also got rid of the mitigating, the qualifying, and the equivocating that plagues sitting senators.
As Kerry showed, if you can't do that during a presidential campaign, you'll find yourself right back in the Senate when the campaign is over.
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