Two Good Candidates This Time?

What we have after Iowa and New Hampshire is the possibility of a presidential race between two candidates who are charismatic, honest and thoughtfully moderate.

It might make for a November the likes of which baby boomers have never seen.

Counting from 1968, the first election in which boomers voted, we had Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Poppy Bush, Bill Clinton and now W. himself. None combined charisma, intellectual honesty and moderate politics. And these are just the winners. Remember George McGovern, Gerald Ford, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole, Al Gore and John Kerry?

That's 40 years and 10 elections in which, more often than not, both candidates disappointed.

Is this the end of the streak of awfulness?

Among Republicans, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson are paint-by-numbers conservatives, with their soporific talk about guns and lower taxes. Can't they think of something fresh, 20 years after Ronald Reagan left office? Rudy Giuliani might be a strong leader and moderate in domestic issues, but in the international arena he is capable of performing the improbable feat of making the United States even less respected than it is now. Ron Paul? As radical in his own way as George McGovern.

That leaves John McCain and Mike Huckabee. The latter has his own quiet brand of likability (the first fundamentalist with irony, somebody called him), and seems more pragmatic than the stereotypical Christian conservative. But people who reject the basics of modern scientific thought cannot be called thoughtful.

Over on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has constructed a public persona so opaque, even post-tears, that it is no longer possible to tell what she is or is not. And John Edwards has converted himself into a Democratic version of Mitt Romney, mouthing platitudes stale since Hubert Humphrey.

Which leaves Barack Obama. And the possibility of Obama versus McCain in November.

The Democrat's appeal is that he has the power to recast the image of the United States abroad and at home. An Obama presidency will make America less raceconscious - we will look at him and see him as the president, not just as the black president. Overseas, the recasting is even more necessary, but is Obama too eager to run around the world embracing dictators?

McCain, too, has the power to make this country be itself again, with his principled stand against torture, his refusal to play immigrant-basher along with most other Republicans. Even war opponents who are honest will admit (at least to themselves) that his support for the Iraq surge is born of honest conviction. But I keep thinking back to his "Bomb Iran" moment, singing it to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann." And I wonder what making light of such a grave affair says about the man.

They both bear watching. As does the exciting possibility that for the first time, millions of Americans will know what it feels like to vote for a presidential candidate they actually like, instead of the lesser of two evils.

- Roger Hernandez is a syndicated columnist and writer-in-residence at New Jersey Institute of Technology.