News Summary

COLUMBUS — Republicans won't pick a candidate for president until next year's primaries and caucuses.

Democrats, however, already have identified their 2008 opponent.

They're running against President Bush, just like they ran against Bob Taft in last year's Ohio governor's race.

Bush, of course, won't be on the ballot next year. Neither was Taft. It didn't matter then and it won't matter in 2008.

Tune in to Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., at the Ohio Democrats' May 12 state dinner in Columbus.

"Are you ready to replace cronyism with competence?" Clinton asked. They, of course, said yes.

"We can be ready to end this government of the few, by the few and for the few," Clinton huffed.

Then she sounded an echo from the Ohio governor's race.

"We have to end this culture of corruption and cronyism," she said. "...I'm not sure we even know how much damage has been done by this administration."

Clinton, of course, whacked Bush around for taking the country to war in Iraq.

"Are you ready to end the war in Iraq and restore America's reputation around the world?" she asked.

Currently she is the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. That could make the Democrats' campaign in 2008 against Bush – and whoever the actual Republican presidential candidate is — tougher than their campaign last year against Taft in Ohio.

The Democratic candidate for governor last year was a relatively unknown U.S. House member from southern Ohio. Republicans figured they could beat up Ted Strickland and send him back home to Duck Run to reminisce about the chicken house where he briefly lived as a boy.

The newcomer turned out to be tougher than expected. As an outsider to state government, he was the perfect candidate to lambaste the "culture of corruption" under Taft as well as what Strickland considered the right-wing extremism of the actual GOP candidate, J. Kenneth Blackwell.

Clinton, meanwhile, is an insider. She's been part of the national political scene since her husband Bill's first successful run for the White House in 1992.

Some people know her and really like her. Others know her and really dislike her. She's not going to sneak up on anybody like Strickland did.

Last week's Quinnipiac University Poll found that in Ohio, 46 percent of the voters have a favorable opinion of her, but 45 percent hold an unfavorable view, the highest unfavorable rating of any of the candidates for president, Republican or Democrat.

That doesn't mean that if Clinton's the Democratic nominee that she couldn't win Ohio, expected again to be a key to victory in the presidential election.

Her unfavorable rating of 45 percent may be high. In the same poll, however, Bush's unfavorable rating was 61 percent. He's the man that Clinton and the rest of the Democrats want to make the 2008 race about.

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDailyNews.com.