Oddly (Not Very) Presidential Friday, June 22, 2007

Via the New York Times, I found an article in the Boston Phoenix called Empty Pantsuit. Writer Steven Stark talks about why the two new biographies of Hillary Rodham Clinton are so boring. The reason, of course, is that she's just not a very interesting person.

The press's assumption about Hillary has always been that she's the power behind the throne: the smart, savvy one at Yale Law School, who got better grades but postponed her own political career for the benefit of her husband. David Brock wrote an earlier biography, The Education of Hillary Rodham, that advanced this thesis, making the claim that Hillary, not Bill, was the leading light of the twosome.

There’s only one problem with this theory: there isn’t evidence to support it. Love him or hate him, Bill is a political phenomenon.

But don't get me started on the woman who used her husband and my state to launch her political career. What really interested me in this article was not it telling me what I already knew, but the list of odds that followed. I just had to share it for my readers:

Republicans
Rudy Giuliani	3-2
Fred Thompson	3-1
Mitt Romney	7-2
John Mccain	7-1
Mike Huckabee	200-1
Sam Brownback	1000-1
Tommy Thompson	20,000-1
Duncan Hunter	20,000-1
James Gilmore	40,000-1
Tom Tancredo	75,000-1
Ron Paul	500,000-1

Democrats
Barack Obama	4-3
Hillary Clinton	3-2
John Edwards	7-1
Bill Richardson	40-1
Joe Biden	65-1
Chris Dodd	150-1
Dennis Kucinich	25,000-1
Mike Gravel	1,000,000-1

I decided to post this because it reminded me a bit of the post I wrote about the Papacy before Ratzinger was elected. I've emboldened the names of my favorite from each party above. Figures I would pick the Republican whose chances are judged to be half-a-million-to-one.

And I think that if Bloomberg enters the race, things will look very different for both parties. I don't think Bloomberg is by any means an ideal presidential candidate, he is, as Scott Adams has pointed out, smart, efficient, and independently wealthy.

For me, the only way to root out the corruption that is destroying the American democracy is to reform the campaigning and election process. The only one capable of doing so is an independent who does not have a vested interest in propping up the existing system.