It is three years and 233 days until the next
presidential election in the US, and only 50 days into President
George W Bush's second term.
But speculation is already
reaching a fever pitch about possible presidential candidates in
2008. The list of possible contenders began almost immediately after
Mr Bush won last November.
But this frenzy of
political prognostication is being driven by an undeniably
intriguing scenario - that pits Senator Hillary Clinton against
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Although Ms Rice has
strained to find new ways of saying she is not interested in a bid,
the possible presidential match-up has the chattering classes so
prematurely worked up that they are having a hard time letting go.
Ms Rice said she planned to
return to academic life. Before she became national security adviser
during President Bush's first term, she was provost at Stanford
University in California.
Or as she recently said at
a State Department press conference: "I'm going to try to be a good
secretary of state, and then, as I've said many, many times, there's
always NFL (National Football League) commissioner." She is a big
fan of American football.
Despite of her repeated
denials, several websites, blogs and other grassroots still make
great efforts to encourage her to run.
Ms Rice received glowing
press after her recent European tour. And US conservatives are
looking for a candidate to counter their arch-nemesis: Hillary
Clinton. She is also the source of endless speculation about her
presidential ambitions.
Ms Rice just laughed and
said she had no plans to run, but conservatives are determined never
to let another Clinton call the White House home.
On the Republican side, Ms
Rice comes in third behind former New York City Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani and Arizona Senator John McCain.
Most political experts will
say that at this early stage, these polls measure name recognition
more than accurate levels of political support.
Ask most Americans who they
would vote for in 2008, and they are most likely to look at you in
bewilderment and ask: "Didn't we just have an election?"
University of Virginia
political science professor Larry Sabato believes all this early
presidential speculation is driven largely by journalists in
election withdrawal.
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