2008: Déjà vu all over again?

This agonizingly protracted and criminally costly nominating process might have been worth enduring if it came down at last to a contest between John Edwards-Bill Richardson and Mike Huckabee-Chuck Hagel. Such a competition would be issues-oriented and civil out of all proportion to our custom, with the American voter getting to decide between clear and contrasting visions of the nation's future. Instead, we appear to be headed for another race between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, played this political season by Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, and we can expect the campaign to be muddled and brutish in the manner to which we are so painfully habituated, with an outcome unlikely to disturb the rest of even the lightest sleeper in the luxuriant bed of the status quo.