Not Guy Incognito

If you missed Face The Nation this morning, you missed an interesting interview. Warner was the Dem. counterpart to John McCain, but came off looking pretty good. It did look very similar to the hour-long interview on C-Span last week, though.

I see he's gotten his talking points down (listen for "sensible center" "triple bank shot" "comfortable in my own skin" and "fiscal responsibility" in the coming months), and looks like a man on the move.

Right now, the '08 race for president is all about national name recognition. If I mention Hillary, Rudy, or McCain, you know who I'm talking about. Mark does not have it yet, but he's slowly getting closer..

The Democrats want an idealist, but they want someone who will win first and foremost.
Sen. Clinton is the leader for the moment, but there's a lot of time to go, and I say she has no chance down the road.

Why? It's not the fact that she's a woman. It's the fact that she's THAT woman. The Republicans would LOVE to trash her, and have been preparing to do so since 1992. And the Democrats know this.

She'll ride a wave early on, but then it will come crashing down. Remember, the scream didn't do Dean in. His popularity was on the wane already when Democrats realized there was no way he could win. Look for one embarrasing or uncomfortable moment to do her in.

With Warner, they'd have a much harder time. Running as a fiscally-conservative centrist, he'd take away one argument there. Yes, there would be the standard "He'll raise your taxes" ads, but this could easily be blunted by the fact that Warner cut jobs and services before the cleverly titled 'tax reform' of last year. In fact, he could actually out-do the GOP on the issue: just look at the amazingly massive new spending in this year's Transportation Bill to see.

After the Virginia Governor's race, Republicans are talking about "firming up the base", when what they really need to be doing is appealing to the middle. That is where Kilgore lost. He focused on wedge issues that in the end, nobody really cared about. The base was there and voted, it was the rest of us that appealed to Kaine. In almost any election, whoever takes the middle walks away a winner, and we saw exactly that here.

That's why Warner will win. For Democrats, he's a candidate who can move into Washington.

But in the meantime, he must work on his name recognition (a planned trip to New Hampshire will help), and to generally get his name out there. Being mentioned as a possible candidate is a good start, but he can't announce his intentions too early or the mystique will be gone.

He also needs to build credibility on foreign issues. He's got a start, but there needs to be much more. He needs another trip abroad sometime next year, and to generally be seen with as many troops as possible, as soon as possible.

So what does he do right now? Stay the course, and not forget Virginia over the next two months. His legacy here right now is pretty good, and he shouldn't risk doing anything to muck it up.