Now that Presidential primary season is getting underway, I'll probably be noting ridiculous facts about the various candidates on this blog as well as the occasional bit of introspection, youtube clip, or tasteless comedy.

How about this little nugget: Senator Hillary Clinton recently announced her bid for the Presidency online (as though anyone had any doubt as to what her intentions were, really). Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Hillary, and I actually think the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton (and possibly -Bush, since they're still talkign about convincing Jeb to run one day, or his half-hispanic son George Prescott) progression would be a little too reminiscent of dynastic rule for my tastes (especially considering how tight HW and Bill are now.)

But I watched her announcement video, figuring I would at least give her a chance.

Here is my verdict, and since I have a blog again I can once more self-importantly declare my opinions to be the truth.

But it is the truth, dammit! ;)

I have a preconceived notion of Hillary as being the ultimate canned candidate -- and I know they all work off of a script, but she seems much less able to conceal that fact than some others (both Edwards' and Obama's announcements both seemed remarkably off-the-cuff, though obviously they weren't.) I was hoping that her video would do something to change this opinion. In fact, it only reinforced it.

Aside from her general wooden presence, there was this absolutely horrible moment wherein Hillary said, "So let's talk. Let's chat." I cringed; it was obviously intended to sound like the sort of thing she'd come up with and say herself on the spot, but it was so horribly forced I was actually embarrassed for her.

A couple of days later, I'm trolling political news sites, and I find this little gem:

"Let's Chat"

From the department of Scrutiny We Only Apply to the Clintons, But They Make it Easy By Having Their Staffers Brag to the Media, we now learn that the "So let's talk. Let's chat" riff in Hillary's speech was the brainchild of ad man Jimmy Siegel, who produced the ads for Eliot Spitzer's gubernatorial juggernaut.

Three questions:

1) Isn't it a problem that a guy who just started is already feeling the need to say he came up with particular lines in the announcement video, like he's auditioning for another job? Shades of "axis of evil."

2) Don't Clinton's people realize it completely defeats the purpose of supposedly authentic language for behind-the-curtain writers to go and tell the media, "by the way, that was my line"?

3) Is that really such a great turn of phrase that you'd want to go out of your way to claim credit?"

So not only is it a pre-written canned line, the guy that wrote it is so freaking proud of it that he had to leak his role writing it to the press? Please.

I don't think we can afford to go down this road again. I'll vote for Hillary if she gets nominated, but I know a lot of Democrats who won't (and, of course, plenty who will.) I also voted for Kerry, hating every second of it. They both have the prepackaged establishment aura that I think a lot of Dems don't like.

Who do I like right now? Well, there are actually an amazing number of good candidates in the field right now, including wunderkind Barack Obama, a much more polished and believable John Edwards, experienced Senate stalwart Chris Dodd. But the one I'm most interested in right now is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

Why? A) He's a governor -- governors traditionally do better than Senators because they don't have the vote trail to be smeared with. B) He's been secretary of the UN and is well-respected abroad, and has shown that he has the ability to exercise real diplomacy with all kinds of horrible regimes and get them to bend to his will. [he brokered a ceasefire in Darfur recently when the Bush administration wasn't doing shit.] C) he's Hispanic. D) He's from the West, which everyone keeps saying is the new battlefield for the Presidency as it's starting to trend Democratic.

I'd be really happy to support Obama or Edwards, but at this early stage, Richardson is my guy.

All that being said, the more I see of Obama the more I like him. I've already made a donation and will most likely continue giving to both. Richardson is a big underdog, so I think it's only fair I should be allowed to back a couple of the horses in this race (did I just compare them to dogs and horses in the same sentence? oops.)