Planet Abell

Dude, you did your best. Nobody can accuse you of throttling back or showing any hesitation about muscling Hillary into the White House. Hell -- if anything, your occasional over-the-top jabs at Barack are all the evidence anyone could need that you have met your poli-marital obligations. Setting yourself up for "that man crazy!" from time to time is a great way to prove this ain't no half-hearted debate society resolution for you. But now it's time to reveal that secret I think I guessed at last January . You're off to a sloppy start: I know there is thunder not to be stolen from the Hillary & Barack show later this week, but don't do this through a spokesman anymore . Also, don't use words like "obviously," which everybody knows is a way of boasting about not concealing a grudging admission. It's been a tough year. It'll probably get worse before it gets better, before you can continue your dream retirement of going wherever you wa...

N o, this isn't a cheap shot at perhaps the nation's first woman president. Nor is it a cheesy post-holiday attempt at "It's a Wonderful Life" humor. But I do wonder what role Bill Clinton would be playing in this election cycle if his wife wasn't running for president. And what he has in mind for the future. Bill loves to be known as the country's first black president. This is a tribute to his sincerity towards a voting block he doesn't treat like a voting block which turns out in disproportionately-large numbers for Democrats. This warmth is, I reckon, especially savored by a white child of the segregated south; when it came time for the post-presidential potentate to chose a base of operations Clinton landed in Harlem, a brother from another planet. Hillary has many plates she must keep spinning. Some are up there of her own doing, and some are not -- including the gender dish, where her passions are served up as evidence of imbalance in a way they...

W hy would Al Gore want to be president? A darling of the Democratic left, Gore has now garnered the ultimate in bragging rights by winning the Nobel Peace Prize. So naturally the idle speculation about how to convert this into a late-entry presidential bid is in high gear, as if there is only one thing an ambitious, talented person would find worth buying with life's chits in the Big Box Store of America. Clever liberal pundits love joking that since Gore won the presidency in 2000 it's In short order Gore has garnered an Oscar, and Emmy and a Nobel Peace Prize. He's rich. He's young and has good hair. He is beloved by the right people and reviled by the right people. To paraphrase an old Frank Sinatra song, why would he want to go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "I'm running." about time he starting serving out his term, and a group which seems not to be a stalking horse for the man himself took out one of those discount ( legitimately,...

(Disclosure: edited 2/26 for typos) Something has been bothering me about the field of Republican presidential hopefuls, and it isn't the absence of Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich. This is it: Since 2000 (a political eternity) there has been no doubt about an open GOP ticket for '08. Dick Cheney made clear he was not going to run for president after a presumptive two-term Bush administration, leaving no heir presumptive. And yet there is no young, vibrant Republican in the mix or even mentioned as a dark horse. No conservative media darling whose candidacy is so audacious, so presumptuous, it just might work. There is room in the tent -- witness talk of Thompson and Gingrich, who poll better than some announced candidates in some polls, and even whispers of a third-party putsch by Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel . Of the presumed leaders John McCain is a re-tread and, thanks to his support of the of Bush war strategy, a far cry from the "rebel" he was perceived of a...

I 'll have to wait for "The Daily Show" to come up with the official count of how many times Ronald Reagan's name was dropped, but other key facts by my personal reckoning: Chris Matthews lost control at about 8:44 Three questioners, each with his own schtick (reading from a monitor?), is a distraction It is OK to be against stem cell research (even with Nancy Reagan staring you down in the front row), for congressional intervention in matters like the Schiavo case and to use the need for "victory" in Iraq as the catchall answer to any question about the war -- including a very pointed one about dealing with an endless supply of enemy recruits. I had never seen Mitt Romney in an extended forum (if you can call 60 seconds long) or on TV doing anything other than defending himself in sound bites, so I can appreciate now what his supporters see in him: a smooth, prepared, articulate candidate of dare-I-say presidential Why is it that only the fringiest of the c...