"If you want to be the next president, it's time to start running..."

"...unless your name is Hillary Rodham Clinton or John McCain."

According to AP political writer Ron Fournier, now is the brief window of opportunity. Joe Biden "gets it," along with a few others.

McCain and Clinton will [try to] stay out of the fray for months — better to avoid the glare and grind as long as possible.

Seems to me McCain is jumping into the spotlight. He did a whole hour of "Meet the Press" on Sunday and talked about wanting to be President, even as he coyly declined to speculate about who he'd pick for VP.

If he seeks the presidency, McCain's challenge would be maintain his appeal to moderates while highlighting in the GOP nomination fight his support of Bush on Iraq and the war on terrorism.

I'm prepared to read that stock observation at least a thousand times in the next year or so. Am I already weary of the next election? Can't we let a year pass before we gear up again? I think it's that we like to talk about politics, but it's too much trouble to analyze issues in any sort of substantive way. It's so much more our thing to talk about personalities. Tom Cruise is acting strange... Biden is trying to look like a candidate...