Hillary will bring with her all of the baggage of the Clintons in the 90’s (including the 11th hour pardons), without any of Bill’s New Democrat triangulation or the need to negotiate with Republicans. Her only upside is she is expected to be strong against her enemies. The bad side is it’s questionable whether she sees her enemies are the ones outside the borders of the U.S.
My opinion of Barack Obama is moving slowly from young and naive to deeply cynical and arrogant. See Rev. Wright, Rezko, Ayers, and sweetie incident) He holds out to the country the promise of racial healing. Unfortunately he is also the most liberal Senator in the Senate (more liberal than Ted Kennedy). He also has shown the least seriousness on the war and foreign diplomacy. On the other hand, a Democrat President and Congress will force the Democrats to be serious and take responsibility for their positions on the war.
McCain has the best chance of carrying the war through successfully. He does show good instincts on the war. How that will translate into real policy and action is anyones guess though.
Unfortunately he is a loose cannon domestically, as seen by his latest speech on global warming and history on illegal immigration. With a Republican congressional need to support a president of their own party, and McCain’s history of mau mauing Republicans he disagrees with, it is questionable how much of a Republican party will survive his administration. And he’s old.
It will be interesting to see how good a choice he makes for Vice-President. It should be someone who could take over in the first three months if something happens to him. Good would be either Romney and Guiliani, who are known factors to the country. Average would be someone like Governor Pawlenty, who is reasonably conservative, known only regionally, and without known drawbacks. Bad would be someone like Huckabee or Gov. Crist of Florida.
I can’t tell you who will be the best President for the nation long term. McCain is not serious domestically, the Democrats not serious both domestically (e.g. their complaints about reliance on foreign oil, and votes against Colorado oil shale, Alaskan oil, offshore oil, cheap ethanol imports, and offshore windmills), and on the war. But the need to bring the Democrats rhetoric and actions into reality probably trumps that.
Whoever is elected will probably be only a one term president. Which may be why Fred Thompson wasn’t excited about running this year.