I believe this Democratic exchange over our approach to terrorists in Pakistan may qualify as the highlight of Election 2008 thus far:

I don’t really follow Hillary Clinton’s line here:

“I do not believe that someone running for president should engage in hypotheticals.”

Oh really? Well here we are, the voters, doing our best to decide which one of these people we should lend our support to, a decision based entirely upon one giant hypothetical: how will this person perform as President of the United States?

Elections are hypotheticals, campaigns are hypotheticals. You, the candidates, are asking us, the voter, to hypothetically imagine what it would be like were you to be in charge of this country. If we’re not going to engage in hypotheticals then there’s no point in even having an election at all.

And perhaps that’s what Hillary Clinton would prefer. Clinton’s candidacy is based so heavily around her own apparent “inevitability”, she’s ended up running what essentially amounts to an incumbent campaign; simply act as though you are already the president, and thy votes shall come by default. Thus she can run such a tightly scripted, criticism-proof campaign, one in which the presentation of any sort of detailed policy is easily chastised as simply “unpresidential.” To be the president is to act the president.

Obama had a great line in response to this poo-pooing of hypotheticals, one that I think underlies an important aspect of American Democracy, an aspect Hillary Clinton’s role in national politics has certainly damaged:

“We’re debating the most important foreign policy issues that we face. And the American people have the right to know. It is not just Washington insiders that are part of the debate that has to take place with respect to how we’re going to shift our foreign policy.”

Wise words.

UPDATE:
John Dickerson at Slate made this same point a few days ago.