So here we are, with a year and a day to go before the 2008 presidential election. But what will we be talking about next November as we head to the polls?

I know it is supposed to be my job to prognosticate the future by throwing a dart at the wall and loudly proclaiming "This is where we will be!" -- but today I am turning over the prediction business to you instead. Because I am interested in what other people think the momentous issues of next year's election will be, no matter who is left running. So let me know what you think.

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So, according to Bush, you're a Nazi appeaser if you refuse to confirm someone as our highest law enforcement officer who will use Nazi tactics against our prisoners. Or something. Let me try again -- you're not against Nazis strongly enough if you don't allow me to behave like a Nazi and torture anyone I want. Boggles the mind, doesn't it? Like I said, it's hard to tell what he's thinking these days.

Anyway, remember you heard it here first: the Bush Doublethink Corollary to Godwin's Law.

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The time has come for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to hand in her resignation. The latest revelation that the Blackwater personnel involved in the recent Baghdad shooting were given immunity by the State Department for giving statements about the incident should be the final straw for America's patience with Rice to come to an abrupt end.

Of course, the real time for Condi to have handed in her resignation in an honorable administration should have been September 12, 2001. Remember, at this time Rice was National Security Advisor to the president. The NSA's job description is to "take all the intelligence from the various intelligence agencies in the U.S. government and put it all together for the president to act upon." Her spectacular failure to perform this job would have meant disgrace and a shameful resignation in virtually any other administration in history.

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I admit I was going to give this week's award to Henry Waxman, who (as Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) singlehandedly seems to be taking on the job of investigating Bush's numerous power grabs and fiascos, perhaps he'll qualify for a special "Most Impressive Democrat of the Year" award later.

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There is one thing that just about everybody in the Iraq debate agrees on, from President Bush to anti-war Democrats to Republicans to the generals on the ground: that the biggest thing we want to avoid in Iraq is a "wider regional war." No matter what your position on Iraq, from "leave troops there for 50 years like in South Korea" to "bring all troops home tomorrow," pretty much everybody agrees that a wider war which involves Iraq's neighbors is a thing to be avoided if at all possible.

We're now on the brink of that war starting, but we barely even realize it because it's happening from a direction we haven't been paying much attention to -- Turkey. Now, I personally have been warning for a long time that the situation with Turkey could put the United States in a very tough spot, both diplomatically and militarily. Last year (8/9/06) I wrote:

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Senator Chris Dodd wins the inaugural MIDOTW award for showing how Democrats are supposed to behave. He has tossed down the gauntlet on the wiretapping bill working its way through the Senate, and will put a "hold" on any bill which comes out of committee that provides amnesty for telecommunications companies which have broken wiretapping laws in the past by cooperating with Big Brother and just meekly handing over data without a warrant to compel them.

Well done Senator Dodd! The first ever Golden Backbone is yours in a landslide!

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Getting a clear picture of the situation on the ground in the middle of an occupation or war is a hard thing to do. For various reasons, it's hard to trust the reports from the Pentagon, the embedded media, or politicians of either stripe, because their views are usually skewed in one direction or another.

Which is why I give much more weight to first-person accounts from soldiers who have been there. And you can call me anti-elitist, but the lower the rank of the soldier, the more weight I give to their accounts. I see it as: the closer you get to the bottom, the tougher jobs you likely will have performed. This may not be fair, but I wanted to lay out my own personal biases (since I'm criticizing everyone else's).

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Conventional wisdom (or at least the self-proclaimed sages of political conventional wisdom, the Washington punditry) has been telling us that the 2008 presidential election is going to be The Most Important Election In Modern Times (if not actually In History), and that (of course) the electorate is More Polarized Than Ever -- which explains not only how incredibly early the contest started, but also the fierce battles for the primaries now being waged.

But what if this conventional wisdom turns out to be wrong? What if the 2008 election is a real snooze-fest, and voters are barely motivated to go to the polls?

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I must say, Charles Rangel impressed me last weekend, on CBS' Face The Nation, as he is the first Democrat I've heard yet using the "block grant" argument against the Republican spin on SCHIP. Modesty forbids me to take any credit, but if he is indeed reading these columns I'd like to say, "Well done, Representative Rangel!"

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