And in 2012...

Time Magazine has already started handicapping the 2008 Presidential election race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain... yes, we know there hasn't been a primary yet, but why deal with those silly things where voters select candidates? Anyway, here's a snippet...

But the buzz that greets Clinton and McCain these days tells you something about what's increasingly apparent in real-world politics: the 2008 race is already taking shape, and the shape it is taking looks very much like these two potential rivals. Should McCain and Clinton each decide to make a bid--and most people around them expect it--both would become their party's instant front runner, which is not an entirely good thing. In an open field without an incumbent President or Vice President, as both parties will have for the first time in more than a half-century, it's perilous to be the one upon whom everyone else is training fire. McCain and Clinton would be running against not only a crop of other party rivals but also the perceptions and expectations that voters already have of them. "The other people running for President get to introduce themselves," says Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who worked as a top aide in the Clinton White House. "That's not true for her, and that's not true for McCain."

Clinton's and McCain's story lines would be set and would even have a synchronicity to them. Clinton would be declared unstoppable in her party's primary but doomed in the general election. For McCain, that bet would be made in reverse. Clinton would have the money; McCain would have the media. Each would be haunted by another President: for her, the one she is married to; for him, the one who beat him the last time he ran. And if it should come to a head-to-head race between them? It could be a close one: a recent Gallup poll showed McCain in front, 50% to 45%.

As for me, I'm with Stephen Green on his view of the race: "Should Steve shoot himself in the kneecap, or shove a flat-head screwdriver into his right eye?"