Les Jones

Politics > Sorting the 2008 Presidential Candidates

CNN has the results a new poll on voter's views of potential 2008 presidential candidates.

Respondents were asked whether they would "definitely vote for," "consider voting for," or "definitely not vote for" three Democrats and three Republicans who might run for president in 2008.

Regarding potential Democratic candidates, 47 percent of respondents said they would "definitely not vote for" both Clinton, the junior senator from New York who is running for re-election this year, and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party's candidate in 2004.

Forty-eight percent said the same of former Vice President Al Gore, who has repeatedly denied he intends to run again for president. Among the Republicans, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani fared better than the Democrats, and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush fared worse.

One question is whether people would like Hillary more or less once they got to see more of her as a presidential candidate. My guess is that it would take a nuclear charm offensive to put lipstick on that pig. I also think the only way Hillary could win would be for the Republicans to run a candidate with no charisma (paging Dr. Frist! Dr. Frist to the white courtesy phone!). I don't think she could win against McCain or Giuliani, both of whom are personable and politically moderate.

In fact, Giuliani has so many liberal positions (abortion being the biggest one) his biggest challenge will be surviving the Republican primaries. If I were forced to make a bet today, I'd bet Giuliani is more likely to be veep than president.

Bonus! - This could be one race where Hillary's marital problems pale in comparison to the GOP candidates. From Washington Monthly via Michael Silence.

Lurking just over the horizon are liabilities for three Republicans who have topped several national, independent polls for the GOP's favorite 2008 nominee: Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce). Together, they form the most maritally challenged crop of presidential hopefuls in American political history.

Gingrich's hypocrisy on marital issues is staggering:

But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, "Let Our Family Represent Your Family." (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair's Gail Sheehy: "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.