Who do you think will (and/or should) be elected President in 2008?
And let me be the first to say, Thank God for the 22nd Amendment
I vote for Gov. Mark Warner (D-VA)
Personally, I think it deprived you of a good president-elect in 2000.
Any-damn-one who can tell the truth, and has the guts to take responsibility for his decisions. It would also help if he uses information to make those decisions, instead of making a decision and then tweaking the information. And one who does not claim to talk to God all the time. And one who uses fact to persuade people, instead of Swiftboating. And one who respects and upholds the constitution instead of looking for loopholes. And on, And on, And on. I don’t care if he is Democrat, Republican, or Bullmoose party.
Why do you hate America?
I’d like to add to your list: One who appoints people based on merit and if they show they are qualified for the job, not just his poker buddies.
I hope it’s McCain, he’d definitely have my vote.
I’d also second Steve’s points.
I actually disagree with the 22nd Amendment. I think it should be up to the electorate how many times someone should serve. Only once in our history prior to the adoption of the 22nd did a President get more than two-terms, and that was I think justified since I do feel it would have been damaging to national unity to have a change in administration right as World War II was gearing up. And the way FDR saw it, if he didn’t get elected there was an excellent chance an isolationist would be swept into office and America’s ability to help the Allies would go down dramatically and the chances of America entering the war would go down dramatically, which would have had dire consequences.
As for a President that takes responsibility, not going to happen. The media and political observers in general make it impossible for a politician to stand up and say, “I tried something, it didn’t work, I made a mistake, I was wrong.” Common sense would tell us that every President, no matter how smart or how adept, is going to make mistakes, due to the whole “to err is human” thing, human beings aren’t perfect. But making a mistake is blown way out of proportion by people seeking to exploit it for political capital, and admitting you made a mistake is tantamount to political suicide when you’re President of the United States.
I think the Democratic field is too hard to call at this point. Since they will have been out of power for eight years the field is going to be wide open to a huge number of politicians.
Mark Warner is an extremely obvious choice, and since I voted for the man as governor there’s a good chance I’d vote for him as President (and I’m a Republican), so I’d say he’d be an extremely electable candidate for the Democrats.
Warner has a 75% approval rating here in Virginia, a State that is traditionally Republican. When you start doing electoral math this guy has an amazing chance of picking up Virginia for the Dems and winning Florida handily.
The problem with politicians like Warner (and McCain, for that matter) is when you’re right in the center, or perceived to be in the center, you have some of the party faithful doubting you. And in primaries the more extreme wings of both parties have a lot more power than they do in the general election.
If Warner can get through the primary minefield, I think he’ll be President in 2008.
From the Republicans we have a lot of people who are standing out now, and have been standing out for awhile. McCain, Jeb, Frist (diminished by allegations of insider trading), even Giuliani (would never get out of the primaries.)
Of all the possibles out there I’d want Warner or McCain to be president. I don’t even know if either of them will get elected. McCain was defeated because he wasn’t an “insider” in the GOP in 2000, and while he has tried to cozy up to the Republican leadership I don’t know that he’s done enough to grab the nomination, plus his age is going to be a strike against him.
Hillary all the way.
I whish I could, but seeing McCain embrace Bush (literally) and go with bush to the political rallies and making the difference that allowed to barely win, after what Bush did to him in the primaries; and then what Bush did regarding Iraq and torture and still McCain supports the president, I say no to any Republican. We need balance in power not to cement the status quo.
That’s definitely a good point, McCain’s party loyalty has disturbed me a good deal. But at the same time, I think that out of all the potential candidates I’m aware of, he is the most moral and honorable.
He certainly looks good on paper (I just read his wikipedia entry) and appears to be someone who could both win my vote and the presidency. How does he appear in RL? Does he pass the beer test?
True. Here though, if no where else , I think the Dems have the advantage. In 2004 they were willing to pick Kerry over Dean due to preceived “electability” (not a great choice in retrospect, but during the primaries it seemed like the “safe-choice”). While after the election some folks made noises that the Dems weren’t liberal enough, I think in 2008 we’ll see a similar process choose a candidate that is seen as more electable then ideological, though God willing someone with a little more fire in their belly then Kerry.
The Repubs, on the other hand, have been sticking to their strategy of pleasing their base, and its been very successful so far. I imagine that they will continue along these lines and choose someone with conservative street cred, which would toss out Gulliani, Rice, Powell and for reasons I don’t quite understand, McCain, who is disliked by conservatives despite being more conservative, in many respects, then Bush.
I’d like to see a Warner/Napolitano ticket in '08, and I really wouldn’t care which was Pres and which was VP. Napolitano is more qualified, but I feel like a female veep will probably end up being a prerequisite to a female POTUS.
Barring that, I guess I could live with McCain . . . As a socially liberal / fiscally moderate independent I feel like I should have no problem voting for a Republican, but the party has digusted me so consistently since around 1996 that I don’t know if McCain could convince me to give him my vote no matter who he was running against. As others have said, his party loyalty has just been too strong and unflinching, and the recipients of it have been too undeserving. I guess what I’m saying is that I almost certainly wouldn’t vote for him, but neither would I be really heartbroken if he won.
I’m also going to go ahead and make the prediction that Hillary won’t even run in '08, and if she does she won’t make it past the primaries. No matter how qualified she is, she’s too polarizing. The only thing she really has going for her is that a lot of people might think it’d be like having Bill back in office.
I thought Powell said he’s not going to run for President.
Pity, because he seems to be a real centrist republican, i.e. cut government spending while maintaining social programs. He’s a veteran and he was the lone dissenting voice in the admin’s run up to the Iraq invasion.
See, my predictions are already coming true 
The people I named were just some examples of Repub’s that wouldn’t make it thorough the primaries due to the Repub base. Some of them probably won’t even try for other reasons (Powell and Rice have both said they won’t try).
I also see Mark Warner has hired Marion Dixon, which is an excellent indicator that he intends to launch a failed bid for the presidency 
McCain is a booby trap. Dems go for him at your own risk. Seriously. Look at the mans record and actions.
Feingold in '08.
What’s sad is if Warner doesn’t get the Presidency I think it’ll be hard for him to continue his political career.
If he runs and loses in 2008, then the earliest position he could take would be the Governor’s mansion again in 2009, although I’m not sure he’d want to do that.
If he had ran for George Allen’s Senate seat he almost certainly would have won. That seat won’t open up again until 2012. And John Warner’s Senate seat is probably too entrenched for Mark to stand a chance at that.
I guess he could run for the House.
Also I think it’s a bad sign for the Dems if they considered Kerry the “electable” choice. It wasn’t a matter of taking Kerry (electable) over Dean (too liberal/unelectable), Dean was typecast as borderline severe-leftist. He’d be akin to a Dukakis nomination, and it’s a bad sign he was ever even considered seriously for the nomination.
Kerry was more electable than Dean, but he still doesn’t have what constitutes a classically “electable” Democratic President.
If you look at Dems that have actually made it to the White House in the last 50 years, all of them have been Southerners, and fairly middle of the road (Carter was actually not all that liberal going in to his Presidency, or at least he wasn’t perceived that way. I think his religiosity helped with that.) Kennedy was the only one to be from a non-southern state, and he lost in an extremely close election, some have even argued he actually lost to Nixon.
Wow. Kennedy was a southerner!
Who knew?
That will teach me not to read the entire thread.
My bad.
Should be Kennedy won in an extremely close election, which really goes without saying ;).