We all recognize some of the liabilities Hillary Clinton brings to the table as a potential presidential candidate in 2008. Her shrill and pretentious attempts to emulate JFK’s stentorian oratory may be the best emetic known to man. Her attempts to triangulate messages for various audiences ( i.e. flip-flop) is enough to dizzy even John Kerry. Her “progressive” ideas about government and culture repel every normal, freethinking person in America. And those are just some of her weaknesses as a potential nominee.

While these issues, strangely, do not seem to be enough to dislodge Hillary from the collective hopes and imaginations of the left (and Dick Morris), they pale in comparison to her most fatal flaw as a presidential candidate: her last name (or one of them, at least). This has not so much to do with attitudes towards her husband as with the fact that Bill Clinton is her husband. She belongs to one half of an ongoing dynastic family feud whose battlefield seems to be nothing less than the White House.

As Americans, we rightly pride ourselves on the relative openness and meritocratic nature of our political system. Our body politic repels like a foreign body any notions or even the appearance of dynasty. It’s one thing if a senator or congressman becomes a permanent cog in the Washington machinery. A Ted Kennedy can ensconce and entrench himself in his little bailiwick for decades without it raising a national furor because, as a member of Congress, he is only one of 535. Such an entrenchment in the White House is something Americans have rejected, as evidenced by the explicit and implicit contents of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

Think about it this way. If Hillary is elected in 2008, and if she serves a full two terms, by 2016 we will have endured an unbroken 36 year period with either a Bush or a Clinton in the Administration. Twenty-eight of these years will have seen one of these two families in the Oval Office itself. This seems to violate the very sacred principle of America’s open electoral system, opting instead for a de facto dynastic power struggle between the Bushes and the Clintons. And it prompts the astute political observer to reflect on the possibility of each side readying its reserves for 2016. Chelsea Clinton, born in 1980 when this dynastic tit-for-tat began, will have reached her 36^th year, and Jeb, at 63, will still be young enough to run.

Republicans, in the main, seem to understand this inherent limitation on an instinctive level. Jeb’s name rarely comes up as a viable nominee for 2008. We usually don’t speak about Jeb’s liabilities in terms of dynasty, but it’s always there as a subtextual undercurrent. Perhaps this Republican discretion stems from the fact that the GOP has been the chief beneficiary of dynasty thus far, and it will remain so for the next two years. But neither side will fare well when honest commentators begin to loudly discuss this disturbing pattern

If (and this is a big IF ) the Democrats can somehow extract themselves from the inexplicable grip the Clintons seem to have on their collective psyche, and if they reject Hillary as their next presidential nominee, they might have a real shot at the White House. But if, as recent history seems to indicate, they choose the lemming path blazed by the pied piper from Hope (please excuse the mixed rodent metaphors), they have no hope to win in 2008.

If Republicans are smart - which they occasionally are - they will BEG for Hillary’s nomination, key on this most inexcusable of her weaknesses, and then sit back and wait for the American body politic to reject Hillary’s dynastic aspirations like a viral infection.

For this reason, it's all uphill for Hillary in 2008.