Is Hillary's nomination a sure thing? Six months ago, it was almost a certainty. Global name recognition combined with a campaign war chest she's had no problem filling seemed like it would be enough to make other potential nominees wither.

Then in comes Barack Obama.

If she's the insider that sounds like establishment, he's the newcomer that sounds like an outsider. He has the kind of political star power that we haven't seen since John F. Kennedy. And his foibles have, at least so far, worked in his favor.

His limited experience draws parallels to Abraham Lincoln. An admission to once using cocaine has made him human. People hardly seem to notice he is black. Even a name with an eerie resemblance to the world's most notorious terrorist doesn't seem to be enough to contain the public's enthusiasm for him.

 In a word, Obama is hot.

And, well, Hillary is not.

She has her base. But, unlike Obama, she's had to isolate each of her image problems and build walls around them. She's a woman. She's too liberal. Her focus has been on domestic matters. And we haven't even begun to see what baggage her marriage to former president Bill Clinton will bring. Many women still haven't forgiven her for forgiving him.

But her biggest obstacle is her record on the war in Iraq. Clinton and Obama seem to line up fairly compatibly on big domestic issues like health care and education, but Clinton voted to authorize Bush's attack on Iraq. And she hasn't found a credible explanation for her decision anymore than Bush has been able to find a way out of the war.

Obama, who says he is most concerned about "the smallness of politics," has been wearing his anti-war stance like a campaign button. But he wasn't even in the Senate at the time the vote was taken, a point usually overlooked.

Still, Obama made his announcement yesterday to form an exploratory committee on the internet. Clinton has been on primetime and is holding a press conference today to talk about her recent trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.

What kinds of questions has she been asked? You guessed it. What does she think of Obama?

Ever the strategist, she reminds us the election is a long way off.

Anyone remember Howard Dean?

 

Did President Bush in his State of the Union speech last night just give more businesses a green light to drop health insurance coverage for employees?

Despite a glowing economy, more and more Americans can not afford health insurance, don't have access to it at work or have made the decision to go without it, presumably to pay other bills like rent and fuel. The number has risen from 40 million in 2000 to about 46.5 million in 2005 according to the government's own figures. Like Katrina, which wasn't even mentioned in the President's speech, the figures show a contradictory chasm between those who are benefiting from this economy and the growing numbers of those who are not.

The problem of the uninsured is well documented and its impact on the rest of society is sobering: loss of decent paying manufacturing jobs, high numbers of personal bankruptcies, and children and adults who rely on emergency hospital care --- health care at its lowest efficiency and highest price.

Last night, Bush gave more attention to health care than in any time in his presidency mentioning the words 14 times, according to the New York Times. In 2006, he mentioned health care three times and in 2005 only once.

His solution: more tax breaks. Tax breaks and consumer choice are constant Republican themes. The two are supposed to work together in keeping businesses competitive, while lowering the costs of goods and services for consumers.

But like his medical savings accounts, the approach will work for a sliver of the work force. Under his proposal, families would not pay income or payroll taxes on $15,000 of their income. Single Americans would avoid the taxes on $7,500 of their income.

And like the medical savings accounts, it assumes most workers have the money in hand. It assumes that most single Americans do not have dependents --- a partner, a child or a sick family member. And it assumes that competition drives prices down, something that has rarely shown itself to be true in health care.

But more than anything else, the Bush proposal is another wink-nod to many businesses that are already eliminating or reducing employee benefits in order to fit a changing definition of profitability for our rosy economy.

He's leaving for the superintendent's job in Boston.

No, he turned it down.

Yes, he's going, but he'll finish the school year in Rochester.

No, he changed his mind and he's not going to Boston.

Yes, he's leaving, but now it's to Albany to join Spitzer's team.

And nobody's talking until sometime next week.

So goes Superintendent Manuel Rivera's job-change drama. The story that he had changed his mind first appeared in the Boston Globe yesterday. According to the Globe, negotiations over a $300,000-a-year, five-year contract fell apart when Rivera and the Boston district couldn't agree on how much Rivera would be paid in a buyout, if the job proved not to be a good match. Boston officials seem to have been caught off guard as much as Rochester officials were when Rivera announced he was moving.

The Globe reported today that Boston's mayor received a call from New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who said Rivera will have a senior position in the administration dealing with public education. Rivera isn't commenting. But the governor's office has confirmed that an announcement will be made next week.

Rivera, who co-chaired the new governor's education transition team, has championed increased state aid for urban school districts. Little is known about his new position, but if it gives him some influence over state education policy and funding, that would be good news for Rochester and other urban districts.

With Boston out of the picture, could Rochester have kept him? Or maybe he can help Rochester more by being in Albany. In the past, City Hall, like many governments in cash-strapped cities, has tried to reduce school aid as state aid has increased. If Rivera has influence over Spitzer's education policies, he might provide a push back from City Hall.

Well, now we'll see: Eliot Spitzer has promised reform, but it looks like business as usual with other Democrats in Albany.

The Democrats will choose a replacement for Comptroller Alan Hevesi, and Assembly Leader Shelly Silver wants that person to be a member of Assembly. Spitzer had persuaded Silver to let an independent panel select up to five finalists for the job, though. And when the panel announced its choices yesterday, there were only three. None were politicians.

Silver isn't happy. And according to today's New York Times, he says he doesn't have to pay any attention to the panel.

The panel was composed of three former state comptrollers --- who, one assumes, know what's required for the job. And all three of their picks have a financial background: Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman, New York City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, and William Mulrow, an investment banker.

Former State Comptroller Edward Regan, one of the three independent-panel members, told the Times that the governor had asked for "up to five, high-quality, non-partisan" nominees. "There were only three that had the qualifications that had been set out," he told the Times.

Scandal forced Hevesi --- a Democrat --- out of the comptroller's position, so you'd think that Silver and his pals would be on their best behavior right now.

Apparently not.

Spitzer has no power to force the Assembly to choose one of the panelists' finalists. About all he can do is persuade.

That's going to be true, of course, for a lot of the reform efforts Spitzer has promised. He's just been handed his first test.

Former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee, announced his run for the presidency on last Sunday's Meet the Press. Huckabee began by talking about his desire to see American politics become less divisive.

But when NBC host Tim Russert pressed Huckabee on his views of gay marriage, for example, the bobbing and weaving began. Huckabee is against gay marriage, civil unions and gay adoptions.

Defending his homophobia, Huckabee said we should be doing more to strengthen the relationships between men and women before we redefine the family and marriage.

Then he reminisced about the good ol' days of the 1950's.

Russert asked him to explain what he meant by a comment he made --- that we somehow went from Mayberry to Beavis and Butthead, and from Barney Fife to Barney Frank. Why, Russert asked, did he reference Congressman Frank in the remark?

Huckabee says, the comment was not intended to be derogatory toward Frank, but clearly it was.

It's not unusual for Boomers to long for the 1950's. The quiet, simple life portrayed in TV's rural Mayberry is still appealing to many people who have grown tired of long work hours and the hectic commutes of urban centers.

But it was also a time when the Klan terrorized blacks and restrooms had "whites only" signs. Women were discouraged from going to college and pursuing careers. And abortions were performed in backrooms.

For many people, Frank's personal achievements are a milestone. Unlike the dim-witted, goofball that actor Don Knotts portrayed brilliantly, Frank is a Harvard graduate and the first openly gay man to hold a seat in the US Congress.

It seems Huckabee would rather we live in a world where gays remain in the closet and women stay at home raising children. He says we have to think of what is best for children when we think of gays who want to adopt.

That argument relies on the belief that gay love is not up to snuff --- it is not good, healthy, or otherwise right enough to be parental love. It's exactly that kind of thinking that harms a lot of American families.

It might be interesting to send Huckabee back to the Mayberry of the 1950's he has romanticized as a reminder of how wrong some things were during that time.

And while he's there, he might want to look up Floyd the barber. As gays used to say when in mixed company --- he was a friend of Dorothy's.