Don't stop thinking about tomorrow: Hillary's ideal America, circa 2020

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From The Post:

The Clinton brand is a powerful asset and a divisive force. As Bush showed when he ran for president in 2000, an attractive brand and past association with a presidency is not sufficient to win the White House.

Bush's first presidential campaign may have been motivated by a desire to avenge the defeat of his father at the hands of Bill Clinton, but he did not run as the political twin of his father's administration or as the instrument to resurrect his father's agenda. He traded on the Bush name but did not allow it to restrict his vision.

How Sen. Clinton plans to deal with this, if she becomes a candidate in 2008, is far less clear.

Bill Clinton presented himself as a New Democrat, Bush as a compassionate conservative.

The senator has been a workaday legislator without a defining imprint of her own. In her DLC speech last week, she offered a description of an ideal America in 2020, which many in the audience regarded as an appealing vision, but it was not intended as the kind of hard-choices agenda that DLC leaders may envisage.

I like that Hillary is at least thinking about what an ideal American might/should look like in 2020.

And/But even though I've been saying (for over a decade, in fact) that Bayh is the future of the party, well, I don't see him -- or Vilsack and Warner for that matter -- as ready for prime time yet.