Is Hillary Really Inevitable?

Throwing red meat to his GOP base, Rudy Giuliani unleashed a new battle cry.... "I'm not Hillary."

While dissing Hillary Clinton, Giuliani, as a member of the white-males-only GOP presidential candidate club, ironically told a national convention of Republican women devoted to getting women elected, "We have a record that's very, very proud and very long of making certain that women participate on a full and complete and equal basis with men."

Just not when aspiring to the highest office.

Today's New York Times also fired at Hillary.... Frank Rich aimed his powerful pen at the similarities between Hillary's perfectly oiled "inevitability" campaign and that of the losing Al Gore in 2000.... or even that of slick New York Republican Thomas Dewey running against the unslick but earnest incumbent Harry Truman in 1948. Dewey sloganeered... "It's time for a change." NOT!

Rich wonders if with a presidential candidate from New York known for her experience, competence and above-the-fray demeanor.... Hillary.... the Democrats could lose the White House in 2008.

In a effort to divert attention from this robotic campaign performance, Hillary has resorted to a loud giggle-laugh.... it's about as humanizing, and authentic, as Rudy Giuliani's smooching I'm-a-loving-husband cellphone calls from his third wife in the middle of campaign speeches.

The public senses authenticity.... and Hillary's make-no-mistakes defensive debate crouch punctuated with a laugh sure to be labeled a "Shrillary" is a campaign three dollar bill.

Next thing we know, Hillary will plant on her frisky Bill a full lip lock a' la Al and Tipper's convention stopper. But, what Hillary really needs to do is stop giving safe answers when voters are looking for Truman truthiness. Rich grumbled, "What I saw on television last Sunday was the incipient second coming of the can't-miss 2000 campaign of Al Gore."

Tying together both the Giuliani take on Hillary with the cautionary tale of Rich, Maureen Dowd today unleashed her piece "The Nepotism Tango" in defining the Democratic frontrunner.

Dowd muses that, "Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar. But then, without nepotism, W. would be pumping gas in Midland -- and not out of the ground."

As Joe Biden pointed out at last Sunday's debate, all of the "old stuff" might get in the way of passing legislation. "The special interests, with regard to Hillary, they feed on this, you know, this Clinton-Bush thing." That "thing" is dynasty.

Perhaps this seeming dynastic inevitability is the reason for Hillary's un-Mona Lisa guffaw.... tickled pink by the thought of her entitled Democratic coronation.

Or, is it as Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of the very conservative The New Republic, sees Hillary (listen up "equal" GOP women), "She's like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won't stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone."

Hillary seems locked into her disciplined campaign march, daily becoming less, not more, likable.... just like the hapless wooden Gore, despite his wardrobe changes and wife wuzzies. As the saying goes, at this point it's still Hillary's to lose.

Which might not be a bad turn of events for the Democratic party and the country. We can do better than the dynastic choke-hold of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.