Taking stock of the 2008 field
LOOKING AT the Republican presidential field, you might be forgiven for thinking that none of the main contenders can be nominated.
The presumed front-runner, Senator John McCain, never a favorite of the Bush crowd, has lately emerged as more hawkish than the president himself. But by primary season , the war may be even more unpopular, and most Republicans will be distancing themselves from the Iraq mess, not urging its escalation.
Rudolph Giuliani did well after Sept. 11 , 2001, and was an impressively well-liked Republican mayor in liberal New York. But Giuliani was popular as a steadfast social liberal, respectful of gay rights and abortion rights. Unlike former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Giuliani was far too forthright to start doing pirouettes now. It's hard to imagine the GOP base going along.
And speaking of Romney, the malleable Mitt has done so many reversals that the makers of flip-flop commercials will have a field day. Romney is also on the defensive as a Mormon, since many fundamentalists don't consider Mormons Christians. Almost half a century after the civil rights revolution, this should not matter, but that's right-wing politics for you. Romney is having trouble getting out of first gear.
Of the also-rans, Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas fundamentalist, is unlikely to travel well. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has likewise failed to take off. And Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a traditional conservative, would make a good president; but he's too vocal a critic of the president to be forgiven by loyalists.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is constitutionally disqualified as foreign-born. Jeb Bush might be plausible if his name were anything other than Bush. An oft-mentioned long shot, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has never run for office.
And it gets worse. The Bush administration has collapsed on so many fronts that Republican officeholders up for re election will be torn between saving their own necks and remaining loyal to the hard-core base. Eight or nine Republican Senate seats could be at risk.
But someone will win the GOP nomination -- only to face the strongest Democratic field in decades. And here is an incautious prediction: the Democratic nominee is likely to be Barack Obama.
I have followed politics far too long to fall in love, but Obama is like nothing we have seen since Bobby Kennedy and maybe since FDR. If you haven't read his first book, "Dreams from My Father," you owe it to yourself.
Obama wrote the book when he was 33, having spent nearly three years as an organizer on Chicago's South Side, and then three years at Harvard Law School, where he was elected president of the Law Review. No 33-year-old has the right to such uncommon wisdom and humanity. The comparisons that come to mind are the young Martin Luther King Jr., or Václav Havel, or maybe Thomas Jefferson.
If you think Obama is a pretty face with a gift for rhetoric and not an effective politician in the most noble sense of the word, read the chapters about his small victories organizing in the desolate neighborhoods of the South Side, one pastor and one kitchen table at a time.
Columnist Maureen Dowd described Hillary Rodham Clinton's money machine against the innocent Obama as Hillzilla vs. Obambi.
But Obama's mass appeal could well roll over Clinton's money. Obama is the only rock star in the campaign. We are likely to see a tidal wave of Americans under 40 who have never seen such a leader. Obama is young, and the Republican field is nothing so much as old. And this is a generation casually accustomed to revering the likes of Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey.
Obama lacks the foreign policy experience of, oh, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. But read of his first trip to his ancestral Kenya, and you'll feel quite comfortable that he has an unerring grasp of the complex world beyond these shores.
I could be wrong, of course. John Edwards, with his authentic populism, would also make a formidable nominee. Clinton, despite her flaws, has always done better than her detractors predict.
With candidates of this caliber, the primary campaign will energize a resurgent Democratic base that will stay mobilized through the November election. Any of these three would also make a fine commander in chief, and not just because the president has so thoroughly lowered the bar.
It promises to be a revolutionary political year, and it's been a long time coming.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His column appears regularly in the Globe. 
