In 1997, the British held an election. It came after eighteen unbroken years of Conservative Party rule, eleven of which were under the messianic, didactic, supremely arrogant – and therefore by then widely hated – Margaret Thatcher.

So reviled were the Conservatives at that moment, and so exhausted was the public with everything about them (not least the hypocrisy of their claims to moral supremacy while scandal after Tory scandal broke in the headlines), that it was widely understood that the Labour Party could have smashed them with even, say ... a poodle as their leader.

As it turned out, that is precisely what happened, though it took another five or six years before that was entirely clear. A Tony Blair-led Labour Party annihilated the Conservatives in 1997, and then did so again in 2001. They even managed to win by a substantial (though considerably smaller) margin again in 2005.

The British had become so disgusted with the sanctimonious Conservatives, their rigid adherence to desiccated doctrines of social dominance promulgated by semi-obscure political theorists, and the destructive effects those policies produced, that they might well have kept the party – once described both as Europe’s most powerful vote-getting machine, and as Britain’s ‘natural’ party of government – out of office for a quarter century or more. Conceivably, had Labour played its cards more adroitly, the historically hegemonic party of such towering figures as Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher might even have been wiped out altogether (though that would have been a stretch), or become Britain’s new ‘third’ party, dominated by Labour and the newly ascendant Liberal-Democratics.

But then something happened on the way to the Forum. Tony Blair made the political blunder of the century by casting his lot with someone else’s foreign policy blunder of all time. And not just any someone. This wasn’t a great leadership figure, like FDR or even Reagan. It wasn’t even a real smart guy, like Carter or Clinton.

No, this was George Walker Bush, pampered scion of a semi-failed former president, himself the scion of a family of war-profiteers who got rich selling materiel to no less an ‘evildoer’ than Adolf Hitler. This was a guy whose intellectual incapacities and voracious psychological insecurities were on display for all to see – even without hanging with him at Camp David – if only one was willing to look. Here was an allegedly reformed addict, Vietnam War dodger and all-around failure continually bailed out by the sheer luck of his surname, whose lock-step adherence to absurdly ironic theories of rugged individualism and tough-guy foreign policy makes Thatcher look like a cross between Florence Nightingale and Neville Chamberlain by comparison.

It is truly one of the great mysteries of our time why Tony Blair – himself no great leader of men, no man of firm principal, but nonetheless a gifted mass-shmoozer with finely-honed political instincts – followed a walking catastrophe like Little George Bush off a cliff. He certainly didn’t have to, nor would declining to do so have meant necessarily staking out the opposing stance that France’s Chirac or Germany’s Schroeder had. (Though, interestingly, had Blair joined those two in vehement opposition, Bush would have had a much more difficult time selling his war, both at home and abroad. Perhaps the only other person on the planet with more power than Blair to have stopped the war was Colin Powell, another chump whose stunning failure in judgement resulted in the hitching of his wagon to a star transparently going supernova.)

Blair could have quietly stood aside, had he wanted to, and neither criticized the invasion nor participated in it. Any politician with one-tenth Blair’s smarmy deflection abilities could have easily spent day after day pummeling Saddam, that prominent punching bag of an evil Butcher of Baghdad, giving Bush the cover he needed while at the same time committing no British forces to the operation, or perhaps just a token force for a brief period. Why the otherwise consummate political climber Blair pulled such an obvious and unimaginable boner of this magnitude is a profound puzzle (probably he thought, like Bush, Kerry and Hillary, that the war would be a cakewalk – so why be left on the wrong side of history, since it was going to happen regardless?), but actually not the subject of this essay (this rather longish detour, notwithstanding).

Rather, I refer to this history for its utility in understanding American politics in 2008. The British and the American electorates have had a pretty uncannily similar trajectory over at least the past several decades, and so it is again today – albeit a decade delayed – with respect to the Tory implosion of 1997. In the late 1970s the British voted their left-leaning party out of office, principally because of economic malaise. Americans then did the same thing to Jimmy Carter a year later. Their Labour government was replaced by a decade’s worth of Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal economic devastation, bully-bully-jingoist foreign policies, and nauseating claims to moral superiority. Can you say ‘Ronald Reagan’? Thatcher was replaced by a kinder, gentler version of her scary conservatism in the form of John Major, just as the US did the same thing by electing the preposterously whiney George H. W. Bush president. Then comes the turn back to the party of the ‘left’ (sort of) – by now, however, led by a telegenic and smarmy, quintessential television-era politician who wouldn’t know a political conviction if it smacked him upside the haid. In the UK that was Tony Blair, here it was our very own Bubba.

But then came Selection 2000, and the US inadvertently reverted back to the triple-latte-crystal-meth-amped-up-to-eleven form of Reaganism which is only now in the process of being shoved back into the ugly swamp from which it somehow got loose. Which brings us to the election of 2008. Reaganism was never repudiated in America the same way that Thatcherism was in Britain (indeed, Nancy and her merry workshop of right-wing historical fabricators have out-Cameloted Camelot in creating a mystique around the mistake that was Ronnie). But repudiated it will be now. Just like Britain in 1997, whoever wins the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2008 will be elected president in a landslide. Even if it’s a poodle. Or worse.

By my reckoning that means the election comes down to this simple formula: If Al Gore runs, there is a possibility – perhaps even a probability – that he would win. Otherwise, we’ll be inaugurating President Hillary on January 20, 2009. (This, of course, assumes that both Bush and Cheney haven’t first been impeached and convicted. If that happens, and if it happens soon enough, we could then expect President Pelosi to run for ‘reelection’, with a decent chance at winning.) In any case, what the Republicans do won’t matter a whit. This election will be much like those in the old Solid South of the post-Reconstruction era: whoever won the Democratic primary was effectively the winner, since no good ol’ boy in his right mind ever voted for the party of Lincoln in the general election.

Indeed, next year, the Republicans are more likely than even not to aid in their own destruction. Since it is registered party members who will vote to select their nominee, and since it is this same hard-core cohort of the walking comatose who comprise the thirty percent of Americans still supporting the Bush presidency – still! – my bet is that they will choose one of their own to march into the gates of Hell carrying their standard. This choosing of some like-minded Precambrian creature as their nominee after eight years of the Petulant One could make the Charge of the Light Brigade look like tactical genius by comparison.

Anyhow, that means McCain is out. And well he deserves it. By 2004 his carefully crafted, but hitherto still somewhat plausible image as a ‘maverick’ was in tatters. This sad impersonation of his former self lusts after the presidency so much that he joined Blair and Powell in suturing his body to Little Caligula’s in a sort of reverse Siamese twin surgery, even after Rove had swift-boated him viciously in South Carolina in 2000, spreading barbarous rumors about McCain’s supposed post-POW lack of mental hygiene, and about how his adopted daughter from Bangladesh was actually the product of an interracial love affair. Talk about your Stockholm Syndrome! Christ, why a furious McCain didn’t just waterboard W right there on national television is beyond me. And how he could later give that nauseating speech supporting Bush’s ‘reelection’ at the 2004 Republican Convention and then stump for him around the country is truly as frightening as it is breathtaking.

Steven Colbert’s sardonic line on McCain said it all, and was just about my favorite howler in a speech full of gut-busting doozies when, at last year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner, Colbert ripped the bark off of Bush and the sycophant enablers of the media who every day help to maintain him. Colbert praised McCain for being such a maverick that, who knows, he was probably using any old fork – or even a spoon! – to eat his salad that very night, ‘cause there’s no predicting what such a maverick will do. Well said, Steve, in the courageous performance of the decade (if you haven’t seen this boffo clip, treat yourself to it here). Meanwhile, though, McCain will be (laughably) far too liberal for the troglodytes voting in Republican primaries in 2008, despite all his recent efforts to suck up to the right and change his tune from 2000. Looks to me like the Straight Talk Express threw a rod somewhere along the way.

It doesn’t really matter, though. McCain (or perhaps the far less well known Chuck Hagel) is arguably the best shot the GOP has next year, so if their voters wanted to be strategic instead of religiously pure (pun intended), they could hold their nose a bit and choose him as their only slim hope in what will be a more daunting electoral climate for the right than even 1964. The only problem is that McCain has tied himself, repeatedly and on camera, to Bush and his Iraq debacle. Any Democratic nominee with half a brain and a third of a spine (and without eight-time loser Bob Shrum running their campaign – sorry John Kerry, that leaves you out) just needs to air over and over again McCain’s disgusting convention speech singing the praises of Bush and dissing war opponents to end his campaign once and for all. By 2008, any Republican who was ever within a thousand miles of George Warhead Bush – which is to say all of them – will be radioactive. Those, like McCain, who positioned themselves right at ground zero will get everything they deserve for their efforts. There’s an old saying about people who marry for money: that they earn their living every single day. Ditto for politics. We remember where you were, John, when the chips were down. And we’ve got video.

So who gets the nod as Sacrificial Lamb of the Century – aka GOP presidential nominee – in 2008, then? It won’t be Rudy Giuliani, I can tell you that much. He actually really and truly does have some anathema-making quasi-semi-sorta-slightly-progressive politics on the red-meat issues that Republican voters get all excited about. These chiefly involve an obsession with sexuality (yours, that is – because theirs is so boring, or because it is so self-loathingly not at all boring). And, what is more, everything in Rudy’s life is messy, including his three marriages, at least one very unhappy former wife whom he dumped on national television, his extracurricular activities, and his ties to the likes of Bernard Kerik. Maybe if you’re Bill Clinton trying to get New York City liberals to vote for you that stuff can fly, but I knew Bill Clinton, I loathed Bill Clinton, and Rudy – you’re no Bill Clinton.

So, who, then? Mitt Romney? That’s a laugh. A semi-liberal, Mormon governor of Taxachusetts who is twisting contortion artists into pretzels of jealousy with his attempts to reposition himself as a social conservative (i.e., someone who is shamefully exploitive and intolerant)? Puhlease. Anyhow, who wants a president named Mitt?! How about Pataki, then? The guy is Giuliani without the $25,000 a pop fake motivational leader routine, which is to say a complete nothingburger. Gingrich? Good lord, haven’t we done that enough times already? Jebby? Hah! I’m laughing at you, Jeb – laughing at you! Sorry about that whole bitter bile acid reflux thing that keeps coming up, dude. It must be tough. You were the guy who was supposed to redeem the family name for Poppy and Bar, but you were too scary-right and lost your first race for governor while your big bro, the Clown of the Clan, won his the same year. The rest is history, and the way things look now you’d have to change your name to Kennedy to ever get elected president. All I can say is after Florida 2000, a fate richly deserved, my man, richly deserved.

I think the guy to watch for the Republicans is actually Sam Brownback, senator from Kansas. Even though he has just now broken from Bush on the war, Brownback is otherwise a sick social conservative’s dream, taking over in the Senate where the irrepressible Ricky Santorum left off. He’s so twisted that he recently blocked a judicial nominee for the crime of being a guest in the audience for somebody else’s same-sex union ceremony! Mind you, this is a George W. Bush nominee we’re talking about, and therefore not exactly some sort of Jane Fonda type (unless, of course, there’s money to be made in being some sort of Jane Fonda type). So there’s Brownback rejecting this right-wing George Bush judicial nominee on the basis of some trumped up red-meat non-issue that plays to the whack-jobs to the right of Phyllis Schlafly. Is that Terri Schiavo I hear rolling over in her grave?

Ah, how very 2004. Twenty years from now there will be Broadway plays about our insane little epoch. “Springtime for George”, and such. You gotta love this stuff for its comedic relief, except of course that actual people’s lives are getting crushed every day by this noxious machine, and even if we stopped it today it would keep on giving its gifts for at least another generation. Even if Kansas ain’t Pennsylvania, I guess Brownback didn’t quite get the memo that the country is a little tired of having moral arbiters like Ted Haggard publicly sniffing around in our panties by day, as they’re all the while snorting amyl nitrate poppers and impaling gay prostitutes by night. Call us sticks-in-the-mud, if you must, but most of us just can’t hang with that degree of malevolent hypocrisy anymore. Self-loath, gents, if you must. Project your insecurities on the wall and drive out your demons each Sunday, if you like. Just leave the rest of us out of your psycho-drama writ large.

Some (they’re called GOP voters) still eat this stuff up, of course, in precisely the quantities they are spoon-fed by the master magicians of diversionary politics on the right. Speaking of whom, a Brownback campaign with Karl Rove as chief strategist would be just the ticket to the ticket, as I see it. But also to the slaughter. Election 2008 will be a bloodbath, regardless – though if the Republicans run with a McCain-type figure, they may get away with merely having their clock cleaned. If, as is more likely, the Frightened Right nominates one of their own for president, time itself is likely to come to a stop for the GOP. Brownback 2008 would make the Goldwater 1964 deluge look like a Nixon 1960 near miss.

So much for the Grand Old Party, eh? Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, I’d say it comes down to this simple formula: Either Al Gore runs and/or Hillary wins. By which I mean, only Gore has a chance, I’d say, of beating Clinton for the nomination, and even that is only a chance. She may be unstoppable, and for all the wrong reasons.

I never understood the gaga celebrity worship of Bill, and I understand the feelings Democrats hold toward Hillary even less. This is, after all, a senator who not only voted for the war, but even to this has day yet to condemn it. But then I don’t get Britney Spears, either. I think both are part of the same supremely unhealthy phenomenon, however, which is the practice of ungratified Americans living their lives vicariously through one or another celebrity phenom, each more empty than the next, and each more dependant on some sort of bogus outrageousness than the last. You know it’s a sick society when the likes of Madonna seems tame, but it was even sicker when she didn’t, and people bought into her faux outrageousness as anything other than a scheme to move product. Ooooohhh look! She’s kissing a girl! Now she’s doing Jewish mysticism! Now she’s hanging herself from a cross on stage! How... how... how very controversial!

Sigh. What are you gonna do? We’ll save that discussion for another piece. For now, suffice it to say that Hillary goes into the Democratic nomination race the prohibitive favorite, with loads of adoring fans and lots of experience at running campaigns with a ruthlessness and a discipline that even a Prussian field commander could admire. And, since the Democratic nominee will be the shoo-in victor in the general election, after of Bush and his war have bled dry the GOP for another two years, Hillary has only two things which are potential obstacles to grabbing the brass ring.

One of those, which I expect she’ll deal with in the coming months if not days, is Iraq. As the young Bobby Zimmerman reminded us (before he changed careers and began hawking bras for Victoria’s Secret), you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. And, anyway, Hillary is already the weatherman’s weatherman. Wasn’t it she who once said “I regret that I have but ten fingers to stick into the wind for my campaign”? Well, she should’ve, if she didn’t. No matter. She will continue to incrementally distance herself from the war she not only authorized but legitimized by lending it her credibility. She’s just done so again this week, returning from a lightning buzz through Baghdad designed to give her a plausible rationale for saying something, anything, about the war, only to essentially endorse the status quo, not even signing on for the tepid wrist-slappers her colleagues in Congress are preparing to send down Pennsylvania Avenue, some of which even have Republican support.

If shame were a deal-breaker for the presidency, we’d be calling her History Clinton by now, instead of Hillary. Unfortunately, the current resident of the Oval Office has plowed over that retaining wall forever. Even Nixon looks good by comparison these days. Expect more micro course corrections from Hillary “god-forbid-I-should-actually-stand-for-anything-other-than-getting-elected-after-all-it-worked-for-Bill” Clinton, as she carefully positions herself, always remaining precisely a step-and-a-half behind the public mood. Unfortunately, an unsophisticated electorate allows her celebrity status to continue convincing them that she is something more than the awful political hack she is. Nor does it doesn’t hurt having the Walking Human Disaster sitting in the White House now as a point of comparison. Even Wayne Newton could be mistaken for Sinatra with the right opening act. (RIP, Sonny Bono.)

Of course, her huge advantage is not the same thing as a fait accompli. There are some other folks in the race who want it bad, and some of them will be running to her left, particularly on the war issue. John Edwards is one, though I don’t really see him as ultimately having the legs to cross the finish line first. The guy may even be sincere doing his RFK anti-poverty shtick, but every time I watch this pretty-boy too-slick-by-half personal injury attorney, I am put in mind of a Democratic Dan Quayle. With better brains. But with a worse accent. And the same goofy hair. C’mon, John – Rubber Soul was forty years ago, man. Time for a new coif! Not only does Edwards lack serious national credentials in a year when the public is likely to be damn seriously looking for that whole competence thing again (and less likely than ever to fall for the perennial “I’m a Washington outsider” bullshit), but he voted for the war too. As did John Kerry, who I hope can miraculously find the remaining shred of grace somewhere within himself and sit this race out. Memo to JK: You had your shot. You failed miserably, stupidly and cowardly. People are now dying by the hundreds of thousands in part because of your failures. Half the country busted its butt to get you elected and did its part in spades. You didn’t. So go home, John Kerry. Just go home.

Other potential candidates include Joe Biden, Tom Vilsack, Christopher Dodd, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama. All of them except the latter are pretty far below the radar screen for most Americans, and unlikely to move much from there. Sorta like a pack of Dick Gephardts, only without the, um, personality. That leaves them in the difficult position of finding a way to convince Democratic primary voters to depart from Hillary. Given that none of them except Kucinich have a dime’s worth of difference to their politics, it will be tough to give people a reason to do so, and almost impossible without playing hardball and thereby also damaging themselves in the process. Besides, my guess is that anybody who opts to play rough with Hillary had better be prepared to be handed their head by her. She’s not going to lay down and take it, smiling on the way to political oblivion. And she surely won’t do so in the name of ‘Democratic unity’.

Kucinich has great politics, and in a perfect world he’d have a real shot at the presidency. Alas, you may have noticed recently that our world is somewhat less than perfect, and is so somewhat more than occasionally, at that. A rather obscure leftist congressman from Ohio with a ramshackle campaign organization is just not very likely to rise above the pack this year or any year, however worthy his politics may happen to be, and they are very good. (And let’s get it over with and say it, my friends: poor Dennis just doesn’t look the part. It ain’t fair, but a guy with his appearance is just always going to have a hard time drawing votes for the presidency.)

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has lately been all the rage in Democratic circles. For that matter, he’s also been all the rage in Republican circles, and the encouragement of him by right-wingers to seek the Democratic nomination probably tells us most of what we need to know about his candidacy. There are some things to like about Obama, actually. Well, at least one thing – virtually alone among serious Democratic candidates, he opposed the Iraq war self-immolation resolution of 2002, though he wasn’t actually even in Congress then. But have we heard anything from him since? On that issue or any other issue? I could be sorta kinda maybe a little tempted to support Obama (well, actually not really), his ridiculous degree of his inexperience notwithstanding, if I could find him on the map somewhere – anywhere – but I can’t. His inexperience will undoubtedly be his Achilles’ heel in this race (can’t you just hear Hillary now: “Haven’t we had enough of that whole unprepared president thing for a while?” Or how about: “I fully support Barack for president. In 2016.”). But, actually, I think his issues are much bigger than that. Or, more accurately, much, much smaller.

In this sense, I am more than a little reminded of the quasi-admission of previous cocaine use he made in his book, in which he confessed to having played around with marijuana, alcohol and “maybe a little blow” in his misspent youth. Maybe a little blow?! Well, shit, man. Did you, or didn’t you? Of course you did! Why on earth would you make yourself vulnerable with a line like that if you hadn’t? And probably it was quite a bit closer to a lot of blow than a little, now that you mention it. So, look, if you’re going to drop trou like this, you might as well get it over with and slide your fancy silk boxers down to your ankles as well, y’know? And while we’re at it, what in the world are you doing referring to cocaine as “blow”, anyhow? Admittedly, use of such tasty street patois will give you the serious cred you need to win the gangbanger vote (“Word, Homes!”), but are there really enough of ‘em out there to compensate for the minivan fleet of Wonder Bread soccer moms you’re gonna be alienating, already nervous about voting for an unknown, inexperienced black man with a funny name for president? (Not to mention a somewhat-less-than-funny middle name: Hussein. No, I’m not kidding. With just a tweak here and there, this guy could put together the perfect name for losing the most votes imaginable in American politics – “Adolph Hussein Osama”. Catchy, eh? Add “Pol Pot Mao” for a running mate, and there go the other six votes in the country not already ‘blown’ to the cocaine admission.)

Ah, but, um, where were we? Oh yes, yes. The small matter of issues. Really, I couldn’t care less whether Obama or anyone else tooted their way through young adulthood. No big. My problem with Obama is the same one I have with just about every Democrat in the race. We have been living, these last six years, in scary times. To my mind, it is no exercise in hyperbolic excess to describe the Bush era as a moment of constitutional, international and environmental crisis. What I want to know from the Obamas and the Hillarys and the Kerrys and Bidens of this country is, simply, Where the hell were you? If you couldn’t stand up these last years, with American democracy and the health of the planet and the lives of a million people at stake, when would you ever stand up? It makes me sick to have to settle for somebody like this, whose moral compass was evidently dropped on the road years ago somewhere outside of Lubbock, only to be flattened by a passing Ford Ranger 350, and is now stuck pointing permanently south. Is this really the best alternative we can generate for president of the United States, out of three hundred million of us sorry creatures?

As far as I’m concerned, Democrats are in some ways even more complicit in the regressive movement’s march to the sea than are the right-wingers themselves. By failing to say anything, to offer an alternative, to speak truth to power, these self-serving cowards legitimized the predations of Bush & Company and cleared the ground ahead of their destructive juggernaut. For what use is there of an opposition party in a democracy if it fails to provide the public with a critique of the ruling gang and an alternative vision? As I see it, these sad paragons of career security, personal aggrandizement and moral flatulence should be given the international soapbox once more only, for five minutes – just long enough to apologize profusely and beg forgiveness for the damage they’ve done to this country and several others as well – and then they should slither back to that hottest place in Hell that Dante had reserved for those like them, who in a time of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

Which brings us, finally, to Al Gore, for my money the only American politician (a term which doesn’t really do justice to him today) of serious stature who has acquitted himself honorably these last six years – and who has a vision, to boot. I had no use for the Gore of 2000 (and even less for the one of the 1980s), but I admired him when he had the courage to bite his lip and remain quiet for a year or two following the outrage of that election, for to do otherwise probably would have turned him into a permanent caricature and discredited his politics. When Gore did begin returning to the political stage around 2002 or so, he was a new man, seemingly freed forever from the debilitating restrictions which shackle calculating politicians everywhere. To watch Gore today is to see a figure of passion, sincerity and courage, but also of humor and humility.

Coupled with his resume, competence and association with a decade in American history that looks better and better to the average voter every day, I think Gore could be just what the electorate is looking for in 2008. In any case, he is probably the only potential candidate who could beat Hillary in a race for the nomination, and therefore also the presidency.

Gore would have to campaign the way he’s been speaking for the last four years or so, and the way no serious presidential candidate has in a lifetime or more. No more alpha male makeovers, no more focus group tested shibboleths of terrifying tedium, no more calculated position papers. Just a real guy, a real patriot, with the competence and experience to lead the country, and the wisdom and humanity to know which direction to go. My god, wouldn’t that blow the doors off of the tired jalopy that is American democracy, to have a presidential candidate just speak truthfully for once, all caution to the wind? It would take someone who needed to keep their honor and integrity intact much more than they wanted to be president (unlike just about anyone who has run for president in my lifetime). That’s what I see in Al Gore these days.

I remain (hopelessly?) hopeful that there is a silver lining to the tragedy we’ve endured these last years. It comes at enormous cost, and perhaps I am wrong even to believe that it exists. But, then again, maybe not. Maybe the Bush years have been a sobering experience for heretofore politically inattentive and negligently careless Americans. I think perhaps they’re ready to pay a little more attention to politics than they have been these last decades. I think they know the cost now of failing to do that. And I think they’ve come to appreciate just how bankrupt are the prescriptions of the regressive predators who have been peddling their snake oil of war, class plunder, environmental destruction, moral hypocrisy and political crassness for just a bit too long. The chickens of the scary-right have only just now started coming home to roost, and there is far worse to come even if we did a 180, like, yesterday, but it is enough already for Americans finally to join the rest of the world and see clearly where this all goes. And somehow death, destruction, bankruptcy, international contempt and shredded civil liberties just don’t present an appealing picture, even to famously detached American voters. Go figure, eh?

President Hillary would be so depressing, though without question infinitely better than the disaster we’ve got now. But I sure hope Gore runs in 2008. Al, your country is making one last call on your patriotism. Once more, kind sir, to the ramparts.

We deserve something so much better than Hillary Clinton.

My god, we’ve earned it.