By: E&P Staff "It's only 2006," we wrote here back in March of that year, "and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has already written off Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential race. It may be true, she warns, that Democrats "are racing like lemmings toward a race where, as one moaned, 'John McCain will dribble Hillary Clinton's head down the court like a basketball.'" But she yearned for Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. At 44, Obama, she pointed out, was already a year older than John F. Kennedy when he became president.
"The weak and pathetic Democrats seem to move inexorably toward candidates who turn a lot of people off," she advised. "They should find someone captivating with an intensely American success story ... and shape the campaign around that leader. ....
"The Democrats should not dismiss a politically less experienced but personally more charismatic prospect as 'an empty vessel.' Maybe an empty vessel can fill the room."
She added that it may be true "that Americans, as one Democrat told me, 'will never elect a guy as president who has a name like a Middle East terrorist.'" But the Democrats, she said, do not "stand for anything" and they have "no champion at a time when people are hungry for an exciting leader, when the party should be roaring and soaring against the Bushies' power-mad stumbles.
"They should groom an '08 star who can run on the pledge of doing what's right instead of only what's far right. ... Democrats think Senator Potential's experience does not match Senator Pothole's. ... The Republicans won with Ronald Reagan and W. by taking guys with more likeability and sizzle than experience."
She also mentioned Tom Brokaw maybe fitting the bill.
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