The bushbaby won't cut it, I reckon. The golden rule in stuff like this is to control one's media appearances - especially to control interviews. He can't do it, and Clinton does it better than any pollie I've ever seen (the control he managed to exert, in the face of both situation and damning evidence, during the Starr show trials was simply awesome, for mine). Bush has got to go through this for another fifteen months, and my bet is he ain't up to it.
Also, a would-be demagogue has to have more than poll data at his disposal, and this joker hasn't the life experience or the empathy for the sort of hermeneutics required. It ain't enough to be for and agin what the great unwashed are for and agin - ya gotta be for and agin for the reasons they're for and agin, otherwise it'll only take you a few sentences to become incoherent to your intended persuadables. As indeed he was.
Only seen the bloke up close for a few minutes, but I remember how I felt when first I clapped eyes on the then hopeless case from Arkansas, and I felt very differently then. That was a bloke on the up. And this isn't.
So, if not him, then whom? Fair dinkum, if the wannabe-repugs were horses, they'd be more at home in dogfood tins than on a race track.
Can I get some long odds about Al Gore? For mine, all he has to do is behave and hope Al Greenspan doesn't let him down before November next.
Cheers, Rob.