It’s as simple as this: If you liked the Bush administration, you’ll love Rudy Giuliani! And there’s nothing that the Republican voters like better than no change. First, they got Ronald Reagan back in 1980. They liked him so much, they asked for seconds. Then when they couldn’t have Reagan any more, they appointed his Vice President. The senior Vice President was only able to rule one term, before the Democrats ousted him and the Republicans had to grit their teeth and bear with a Democrat for eight years. Then they had a new hope: The son of the Vice President of their favorite President ran for office. They voted him in, and liked him so much, they asked for seconds.

Now they’re running our of Reagan surrogates. So they are searching for the next best thing. While Giuliani didn’t have an official ceremony where he was presented with a sword and knighted by Reagan in front of a Skull ‘n’ Bones altar or anything, Giuliani is certainly doing his best to act like he’s the next Republican in the line. He has certainly rubbed elbows with George Bush, Jr. He has marched boldly into political battle, with a 9/11 sword and an Iraq War shield, with an accompanying minstrel band singing of his mighty deeds in cleaning up New York City.

With that kind of setting, what kind of President is he going to make? It should be noted that Giuliani is unique among the Presidential front-runners, in that the highest office he has held is City Mayor. However, he has served that time presiding over the city of New York, which cannot by any means be regarded as a city in the regular sense. Being Mayor of New York for seven years has got to be about as challenging as being Governor of someplace like, say, Oregon, for the same length of time.

Nevertheless, he suffers in comparison to other candidates, almost unfairly so, because his experience as Mayor reflects smaller, civic duties which do not map well to the job of running an entire country. He has been a working lawyer for 19 years, more than double the time as Mayor, and furthermore was a prosecuting attorney for much of that time. Granted, he brought down both white-collar crooks and the Mafia, which qualifies as the best job any prosecuting attorney anywhere can do. But even this deprived him of the kind of experience that former lawyers such as John Edwards had, since even Edwards’ cases had more of civil rights and liberties attached to them. Putting crooks in jail is a fine deed, but there’s more to running a country.

Rather than look at his past record, exemplary as it is, we can focus on his campaign promises. He has made a list of “twelve commitments”, the full text of which is available on his website. Briefly, the bullet points are protection from terrorists, secure borders, restore fiscal discipline, cut taxes, make Washington accountable, energy independence, better health-care access, be pro-life, be tough on crime, safe communities, school choice, and more American involvement with the global economy.

These are certainly impressive goals, and meeting them would keep the best of us busy. But on the other hand, they aren’t that radical. Most candidates would pledge to do these things, with the exception of the pro-life one. It sounds like somebody took a default campaign promise template and read it off.

To his credit, he has demonstrated that he has plans in place for meeting some of these goals. For instance, the health care goal has behind it the plan that proposes a tax deduction – not a tax credit, which would benefit everyone – of up to $15,000 for families and up to $7,500 for individuals who purchase private individual health insurance policies. In the case of a tax deduction, you must owe that much in taxes in order to derive any benefit – and then, even the simplest treatment can cost many times that amount.

His sole role in national defense thus far has been his decisive actions in the aftermath of 9/11. And indeed, he revealed himself as a strategic problem-solver during a crisis, and handled the response much better than, say, the Federal government did with FEMA and hurricane Katrina. However, it is also a point that any Mayor in any city would have done much the same thing.

Nevertheless, Rudy Giuliani has a lot going for him on the campaign trail so far. He’s polling at the top for his party, his campaign contributions are at or near the top for the Republican ticket, and he has won the endorsements of Steve Forbes, Tommy Thompson, Rick Perry, and Pat Robertson. If this were only a Republican election, he’d be home free. But he’s polling either tied or below the Democratic front-runners in overall bipartisan polls, indicating that the Republicans may want to think twice about sending a Mayor to compete with a couple of Senators.

While Ralph Nader is not currently running at the time of this writing, there is an active and vocal draft movement to convince him to run for the Green party in the Presidential election for 2008. The site “draftnader.org” sports a petition signed with over 1000 signatures, so he’s worth including “just in case”. He’s nothing if not full of surprises.

Ralph Nader was born February 27, 1934 in Winsted, Connecticut. Both of his parents were immigrants from Egypt and Lebanon. He graduated from Princeton University in 1955 with a B.A. in government and economics and Harvard Law School in 1958.

He joined the United States Army in 1959, but served less than a year before his discharge. He then began work as a lawyer until 1961, when he became a Professor of History and Government at the University of Hartford until 1964. He then relocated to Washington D.C., and took up a position on the staff of Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He also counseled the United States Senate subcommittee on car safety, and was also a faculty member at The American University Washington College of Law. He has continued to practice law throughout his career, but only in between his other accomplishments.

Through the years and throughout his career, Ralph Nader has been an outspoken activist for consumer rights, the environment, and civic government. He has based much of his career on criticizing big corporations, which have largely taken over control of the United States at the detriment of its citizens. He is the founder of many organizations both in the government and in the private sector whose purpose serves to protect private citizens from the greed and misanthropy of large corporations, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Public Citizen, and several public interest research groups. He has also founded a huge number of non-profit activist and watchdog groups.

He has run for President four times, in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. He has never held a public office. However, he has created several regulatory government agencies, most particularly the EPA and OSHA. Virtually every industry from airlines to fast food has changed its practices or added safety features as a result of his work.

Not surprisingly, he has had clashes, run-ins, and struggles with multinational corporations who wanted to silence him. The most famous of these incidents happened after he published his study of car safety, which he gave General Motors failing marks for. General Motors, Inc., responded by numerous tactics to discredit him, spy on him, and even “hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations”. These activities were later the subject of a lawsuit by Nader against General Motors, which he won and received a public apology and a six-figure cash settlement.

Ralph Nader has so far authored, co-authored, or edited 31 books on the topics of consumer safety, consumer rights, and how society is abused by corporate interests. His published bibliography includes a list which would fill this article, but some of his more famous and signatory books are “Unsafe at Any Speed”, “Corporate Power in America”, “Who’s Poisoning America”, “No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America”, and “Why Women Pay More”. He has also appeared in several documentaries, and is fluent in English, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

The current effort to draft Ralph Nader is an expression of his huge fan following. At times, his previous nominations have been what are called “protest candidacies”. So far, the closest thing he has made to accepting the nomination is that he has stated that he might run if Hillary Rodham Clinton receives the Democratic nomination. Since Clinton is indeed the front-runner in the Democratic race, that seems like a very good possibility.

Surprisingly enough, Ralph Nader has shown many signs that he might make a good President, despite not having held public office. He has continuously acted in the best conscience and public interest, he has set up and run many organizations, has gotten things done to improve the quality of life in America well beyond the capacity of many Governors and Congressmen, and has vast knowledge in many subjects which would qualify him to handle almost any problem that came up.

Mitt Romney was born March 12, 1947, in Detroit, Michigan. He comes from a political family; his father was Michigan Governor George W. Romney, who also made a Presidential run in 1968, and his mother ran for U.S. Senate in 1970. He graduated from the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and then attended Stanford University briefly before leaving to begin a 30 month mission in Europe as a missionary for the Mormon Church.

After this, he attended Brigham Young University and got a Bachelor of Arts degree by 1971. He then attended in a joint JD/MBA program between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, from which he earned a Juris Doctor for law and an MBA Master of Business Administration. This gives him the rare case of being a lawyer, business manager, missionary, and member of a family with political connections all at the same time.

In fact, his ties to the Mormon church are deeper than usual; his great-great-grandfather, Parley P. Pratt, was one of the founding members of the Mormon religion. For his part, he has served as a part-time lay minister, and has also served as stake president in his church. However, he has stated that he believes that “a president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States”, and he has proposed to serve no single religion, group, cause, nor interest.

Mitt Romney’s first job after graduating was as a member of Boston Consulting Group in 1974. Then he moved to another Boston-based management consulting firm, Bain & Company, Inc., where he served as vice president for six years. In 1984, he founded his own company, Bain Capital, which he served as CEO for 14 years. In the process, he enjoyed phenomenal business success, either investing in or buying companies including Staples, Brookstone, Domino’s, Sealy Corporation and Sports Authority.

In 1990, he returned to Bain & Company as a favor to bail out the ailing corporation. He took over management and turned it around into a profitable business again within a year’s time. Beginning in 1998, he also headed the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee, and again turned it into business success. As a result of his business smarts, he has a net worth estimated around $230 million.

He had a less successful start in politics, when he lost a bid for U.S. Senate to Senator Ted Kennedy in 1994. Biding his time in the business sector, he ran again in 2002, this time for Governor of Massachusetts, and won, being sworn in on January 2, 2003. Putting his amazing financial prowess to work for the government, he walked in with a $3 billion deficit and managed the state back into the black ink, into a $700 million surplus by 2006. However, he did this by raising taxes and fees, closing tax loopholes, and cutting spending by $1.6 billion, including $700 million in reductions in state aid to cities and towns. In other words, the citizens bailed out the state, under his supervision.

Being Governor of Massachusetts also placed him in the hot seat regarding same-sex marriage, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made the decision for legalizing same-sex marriages in November of 2003. Caught in the middle between a Supreme Court ruling and his religious beliefs, he compromised with instead only allowing same-sex civil unions, but later reneged and went back to banning them wholesale. In 2005, he announced that he would not seek a second term, and his term as Governor ended in 2007, declaring his candidacy for United States President almost the same day.

Mitt Romney is seen as a hard-right religion-based Republican, who capitalizes on his business acumen. He can count on the support of the Mormon church, the business sector, and financially concerned citizens who are critical of current Federal fiscal policy which has the country currently in a massive debt. He also brings a hefty bankroll to the table, having supplied over $17 million to his own campaign, staying easily ahead of other candidates who must count on campaign contributions.

Mike Huckabee was born August 24, 1955 in the city of Hope, Arkansas. He began working in his early childhood, by reading the news and weather at a local radio station when he was 14. He attended Hope High School and went on to Ouachita Baptist University, where he completed a bachelor’s degree, where he obtained a Doctor of Laws degree in 1992. He had a heavy religious influence throughout his life, and at the age of 23 he started working as a staffer for James Robison, the televangelist. Of him, his boss was to say that he was shaped by moral absolutes, with no gray in between black and white.

Huckabee has himself stated that he believes it is impossible to separate religion from politics, so there’s no point in trying. He has also stated that he believes in Biblical inerrancy, believing in the literal interpretation of Scripture, which he holds to be absolute truth. Before he started a political career, he was pastor of Southern Baptist churches in Arkadelphia, Texarkana, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

In his first bid for the United States Senate, he lost to incumbent Dale Bumpers in 1992. However, in the next year, he managed to squeak into a seat as lieutenant governor following a hasty special election. In 1994, he was re-elected to a full term as lieutenant governor, where he served until 1996, when he became sworn in after yet another special election as Governor of Arkansas, replacing Jim Guy Tucker who was resigning due to a legal scandal. When Jim Guy Tucker stated that he might re-think his resignation almost at the zero hour when Huckabee was being sworn in, Huckabee retaliated with a threat to impeach Tucker if he didn’t stay down.

While in the office of Governor, he endured a stormy reign. He created a bill which used money from tobacco companies to combine with existing Medicare money to manage children’s health. He was brought up on charges by the Arkansas Ethics Commission for failing to report campaign payments and for using a fund set up for the maintenance of the Governor’s Mansion for his own personal use. He signed a 3-cent increase in tax on gasoline and a 4-cent increase on diesel into law, purportedly to devote the money to improving roads. He also implemented a school reform which he openly acknowledged was borrowed from the plans of then-Governor of Texas, George W. Bush.

However, his rule has not been without its colorful moments. Ignoring for the most part the issues concerning the governance of his state, he took issues with professional sports, stating, “In almost four years as governor, no issue has excited Arkansans as much as the question of where the University of Arkansas should play its home football games.” He also has a band, named “Capitol Offense”, which plays at political events and balls. He also signed the controversial Covenant Marriage Act into law, making marriage even more a matter of political and religious interests intertwined than it was originally.

When he was re-elected as Governor in 2002, he was seen as undermining the Democratic process for also having his wife, Janet, run for the office of Secretary of State. They campaigned for each other, shared contributions, and publicly endorsed each other. Mike Huckabee withstood the controversy to win a second term, while his wife Janet was not elected to her chosen office.

His second term was even more on the edge of controversy. The Arkansas Supreme Court took him to task for failing to address the issue of having an unconstitutional state school funding procedure, and ordered him to fix it. When he failed to do so, the legislature was forced to take matters into their own hands and re-consolidated the school districts. He also a signed into effect a new 3% income tax surcharge, and had to settle in a lawsuit in which he acted with the Arkansas Educational Television Network to unfairly remove a television program from the broadcast schedule.

In 2005, in perhaps his boldest move in defiance of public opinion, he refused to provide relief or support for the 70,000 refugees from Hurricane Katrina whom came to his state seeking aid, preferring instead to push the burden off onto State parks and local businesses instead. In spite of this move, he requested that the Federal Government declare the state of Arkansas a disaster area due to the influx of refugees seeking shelter, for which he was denied.

As of January 2007, he has announced his candidacy for United States President. He can be seen as a candidate that will appeal to the far religious right interested in swaying the country towards a more theocratic society. He bases much of his platform on religious fundamentalism.

Mike who? Most Americans hear “Huckabee” and think (a) it’s a spin-off restaurant from the Applebee’s chain, or (b) that Fox Searchlight movie from 2004 with Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin. But, no Mike Huckabee is a real candidate with real ambitions, and he has lately surged ahead in the polls, trouncing John McCain and giving Rudy Giuliani some serious heat, despite Huckabee’s having raised only a paltry sum of campaign contributions so far. So what kind of President will he make?

People who recall well the Clinton administration will recognize something special in Huckabee: he’s got charisma to spare. While Clinton showed everybody how cool he was by playing the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show, earning criticism from the right wing that he was “the MTV President”, Huckabee can rock out with a bass guitar with his band, “Capitol Offense”. So who’s the MTV candidate now? Huckabee also has the advantage of being an ordained Southern Baptist minister and a professional public speaker, so he can give a great speech and he won’t need to rely on speech-writers and cue-cards.

Huckabee spent his first term as Governor of Arkansas doing largely bread-and-butter civic functions. He attended to trivial matters like managing taxes and instituting a new school program and a health insurance plan. Nothing too radical or controversial here. He did run aground of some minor auditing from the Arkansas Ethics Commission over inappropriate use of funds and failing to report a minor contribution, but otherwise managed to stay level.

His second term saw some more tax tweaking and another school improvement program. His most famous act of 2000 was to move into a trailer home on the grounds of the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion while the mansion was being renovated. Although the trailer was barely roomy enough and was a humbling dwelling for a Governor and his family, the move saved the state a costly sum since they didn’t have to relocate his entire staff, had he chosen fancier digs elsewhere in town. He was also was named ?Friend of a Taxpayer? by Americans for Tax Reform in 2001.

One cannot escape the religious influence on the Governor. He has been the very model of a “Christian Conservative”, moving to increase the sacredness of the marriage act by instituting covenant marriages, and proclaiming October “Student Religious Liberty Month” in an effort to encourage kids to pray in school. He has of course sided with pro-life issues, and has delivered impassioned speeches outlining why he felt pro-life is important.

For being fiscally conservative, he has used tobacco companies as a cash cow, first funneling all funds from the state’s tobacco settlement into the health care system, then increasing cigarette taxes later. He has raised taxes some, but overall has done the minimum necessary to balance the books. During his time in office, welfare rolls declined by nearly half while the state’s economy grew at a rate faster than the national average.

“Time” magazine named him one of the five best governors in the U.S. in 2005. He has found the media very easy to charm, having appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” to make the obligatory chin joke, appearing on “Meet the Press”, and he has popped up on TV and print on a semi-regular basis. In his bid to lose weight at a time when his weight severely threatened his health, he ran in the 2005 Marine Corps Marathon, the Little Rock Marathon in 2005 and 2006, and the 2006 New York City Marathon. Not only did he finish these and successfully meet his target weight, but he wrote a book bearing testimony to the power of healthy weight management and won an award for his work as a “health crusader” from the American Association of Retired Persons.

All has not been rosy in the Huckabee garden, however. There was a scandal involving a violent criminal whom Huckabee released, and said criminal went on to commit further crimes. Huckabee has also come under fire for his tax-and-spend record, from groups such as “Club for Growth”. He earned an “F” from the Cato Institute for spending and taxing policy in 2006. It seems like they are a lot of feisty attack dogs nipping at his heels; other groups also criticized him for not raising taxes enough, and when he brought up the creative solution of a “tax me more” fund where people could voluntarily pay money to the state if they felt taxes weren’t high enough, he was further criticized for making a “campaign move”.

Indeed, he has a bad habit of drawing fire for his off-the-cuff remarks. He tends to phrase things in religious terms a little more than is good for a politician. He has also written a book, “Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence”, in which he quite clearly demonizes homosexuality, environmentalism, sadomasochism, and other legal and victimless alternative lifestyle practices. Even his recent Christmas ad drew fire for having a very obvious and deliberate cross in the background. Huckabee has stated very firmly that he believes religion and politics cannot be separated at all, and he’d be the last one to try anyway.

One thing for certain, we have Huckabee all out in the open. About the best way to sum up his likely popularity as President is to steal from Abe Lincoln: “people who like this sort of thing will find this to be the sort of thing they like.”

Mike Gravel was born May 13, 1930 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Although he came from a working-class neighborhood, he was able to attend Assumption College Preparatory School, and put in one year at American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts, before leaving in 1951 to enlist in the U.S. Army. There, he served as a Special Adjutant in the Communication and Intelligent Services, then as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps. he advanced to First Lieutenant in 1954. After his Army career, he attended Columbia University in New York City, where he studied economics and received a Bachelor of Science in 1956.

Turning at this point to his dreams of far-away places and adventure, he moved to Alaska. there he worked a series of odd jobs until eventually running for the Alaska House of Representatives in 1962. He won this election, and started his political career as the representative for Anchorage. He carried on here for two terms from 1962 to 1966, serving as Speaker of the House during this time. He declined re-election to this post in favor of running for the U.S. Senate, a post he successfully won in 1968 to become the Senator from Alaska.

As a Senator, he chaired the Energy, Water Resources, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees, and served on the Environment and Public Works Committee as well as the Finance and Interior Committees. Throughout his term, he was known to oppose nuclear testing and policies in favor of atomic energy.

In 1971, Mike Gravel played a pivotal role in getting the famous Pentagon Papers released. These details of the Vietnam war and U.S. policy concerning same were released to public scrutiny largely under his stewardship. He also crusaded against the legislation renewing the military draft during the Nixon administration. In 1973, he was again the driving force behind the construction of the Alaska pipeline, currently providing 20% of United States oil.

Over the years he also oversaw much legislation that had to do with the health and well-being of his adopted state of Alaska. One of these maneuvers was the defeat of a bill that would essentially have sold most of Alaska’s uninhabited land to the Federal government. In blocking the passage of this bill, he would earn an enemy in Senator Ted Stevens – the same Senator made famous when he dismissed the Internet as a “series of tubes clogged with information”. A later bill to take over Alaska while reserving a paltry few acres for National parks went through, over Mike Gravel’s protests.

In 1972, he made a brief run for Vice President in the Democrat party, and while garnering a sizable amount of support failed to get the nomination. He then won re-election to the Senate in 1974 for a large percentage, but lost re-election in 1980 and had to leave political office. Discouraged from this defeat, he temporarily left politics for nearly nine years while he practiced business in the private sector. In 1989, he formed the Direct Democracy Foundation – an organization to advocate the shutting down of big government and transferring more control to the individual citizen. He has continued to spearhead the campaign to revolutionize United States political fixtures, with some modest cheers from his supporters.

He announced his candidacy for United States President in April, 2006. Taking advantage of his seniority and experience in working his way up in government, he has encouraged voters to think of him as “grandpa Mike”.

Mike Gravel is seen mainly as a hard-left Independent party member occupying the fringes of the Democratic Liberal party. His continued stumping for Direct Democracy has put out a call to radically overhaul the United States government. He has argued for the increase of liberty in many dimensions, such as abolishing drug laws, eliminating tax loopholes for the rich, being pro-choice, regulating big corporations, abolition of the ban on gay marriage, creating a direct citizen-controlled non-profit health care system, and many more radical – but refreshing – proposals.

Mike Gravel appeals mainly to the Liberal-Democrat who borders on the Populist belief system. He is indeed very “old-school” Democrat, and through his working-class background is able to connect well with the low and middle class voter, especially any minority group.

John McCain was born August 29, 1936, in Panama at the Coco Solo Air Base during the American control of the Panama Canal Zone. However, he is an American citizen, by virtue of being the son of an enlisted serviceman serving the United States and being on American-controlled soil at the time of his parent’s active duty. He comes from a long line of ancestors with United States military careers. He attended naval base schools wherever his father was deployed, at various Pacific Ocean stations including New London, Connecticut, Pearl Harbor, and Hawaii. After the conclusion of World War 2, he attended St. Stephen’s School in Alexandria, Virginia, and then Episcopal High School in Alexandria, where he graduated in 1954.

He followed in the footsteps of his family’s military history by joining the United States Naval Academy, and went on to graduate from Annapolis in 1958. He was commissioned as an ensign naval aviator in training at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas for over two years. Despite a couple of mishaps in flight crashes from which he escaped injury, he graduated from flight school in 1960 and became a naval pilot of attack fighter aircraft.

John McCain’s first assignment was a station on the aircraft carriers USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise, in the Caribbean Sea during 1962, which put him square in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the major confrontations of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. He then served as a flight instructor at Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi, which had a piece of real estate, McCain Field, that just happened to be named after his grandfather in recognition of his grandfather’s service. In December 1966, he was stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, where he began missions flying A-4 Skyhawks.

By 1967, the USS Forrestal was deployed as part of Operation Rolling Thunder during the Vietnam War. He flew several attack missions over North Vietnam without serious incident, and he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. On July 29, 1967, however, he was almost killed in action when a rocket struck his jet as he was launching from the deck. McCain managed to escape the burning jet seconds before the jet’s bombs detonated from the flames, and the detonation sprayed McCain’s legs and chest with shrapnel. He was lucky to survive, as the ensuing fire killed 132 sailors, and injured 62 others, with the incident, recorded by flight-deck video, still used today in U.S. Navy Recruit Training damage control classes. McCain volunteered for further duty, and by late October 1967, had flown a total of 22 bombing missions.

He then became a prisoner of war when a Soviet missile shot down his Skyhawk during an attack run, forcing him to parachute down behind enemy lines in Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. With heavy injuries, he was surrounded by the enemy, who beat him viciously and transported him to Hanoi’s main prison. They refused him treatment, and beat and interrogated him, but the famous name of his family saved him. When the North Vietnamese discovered that he was the son of a famous top admiral, they hospitalized him and alerted the media to his capture and imprisonment, whereupon the New York Times ran his status as POW on the front page. Altogether, he was to be held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years.

Upon his release and return to the United States, he was a celebrity, with his meeting with President Nixon while McCain was still on crutches making a stirring photograph. In 1977, McCain became the Navy’s liaison to the U.S. Senate, in a move which he would later describe as the beginning of his second career as a politician. He retired from the Navy in 1981, having been promoted to Captain and having received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, the Purple Heart, and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

He ran for the seat in Congress as a Republican in 1982. He was elected the president of the 1983 Republican freshman class of representatives, following a stirring speech which deeply impressed the media and the government. His assignment were to the Committee on Interior Affairs, the Select Committee on Aging, and the Republican Task Force on Indian Affairs. He then sought and won as the United States Senator from Arizona in 1987. He remains in this position today.

John McCain ran for President in 2000, but lost to G.W. Bush. He praised and endorsed Bush in the 2004 campaign. He has now announced his second run for President in 2008. He is a hard-right Republican in terms of policy, and has gathered much support for what can only be described as a heroic record of service to the United States. He is popular with the kind of voter known as a “Reagan Democrat”, and it is even said that, had it not been for George Bush, he would have won in 2000.

John Edwards was born June 10, 1953, in Seneca, South Carolina. Being the first person in his family line to attend college, he first attended Clemson University and then transferred to North Carolina State University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in textile technology. This choice of avocation was due to his father’s career at a textile mill. However, he changed his goals and went on to earn his law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977.

John Edwards’ early legal career can be described as stunning, while his personal life can be described as a brave struggle in the face of tragedy. Having married early, he had four children, one of whom, Wade Edwards, was killed in an automobile accident at age 16 in 1996. This drove the couple to found the Wade Edwards Foundation, committed to “rewarding, encouraging, and inspiring young people in the pursuit of excellence”. Only eight years after this, his wife was diagnosed with severe cancer in 2004, and the couple have continued to work together while she undergoes extensive treatment.

His legal career has been marked by aggressive trial lawyer activity. His name has become synonymous with winning multi-million-dollar damage settlements. He won a $3.7 million for a client who was permanently brain-damaged by medical malpractice in 1984, a $6.5 million settlement for a child with cerebral palsy who was mistreated by doctors in 1985, and a total of $60 million for other clients.

Having become nationally famous in medical malpractice litigation to the point of encouraging hospitals and doctors to change their policies, he then established his own firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1993. He would go on to further court victories from there, including the famous case seeking damages against the Sta-Rite pool supplies manufacturer for a child who was severely injured by a defective product. The settlement in this case was $25 million, the highest ever in North Carolina legal history.

He is the author of two books: “Four Trials” in 2003 detailing his more notable legal experiences and “Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives” in 2006, a series of interviews with people talking about their childhood homes. He also co-edited another book, “Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream”, which laid the grounds for his view that there are “two Americas”, with a vast gulf separating the wealthy from the poor.

John Edwards was elected to be the Senator from North Carolina in 1998, where he was to serve one term before retiring from the Senate. During this term, he co-sponsored 203 bills. Among his actions are co-sponsoring the Iraq War Resolution, supporting and voting for the Patriot Act, sponsoring the Fragile X Research Breakthrough Act, and the Spyware Control and Privacy Protection Act. He served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary. He was also a member of the New Democrat Coalition, an organization within Congress who support moderate Democrat positions and pro-business stances.

He left the Senate in 2004 to start his first run at Presidential election. He lost the primaries in 2004 to John Kerry, in a highly close race where the outcome was virtually a photo finish. In a display of uncommon grace on the part of both candidates, John Edwards became John Kerry’s running mate, with Kerry for President and Edwards for Vice President, but only to lose.

He has announced his second bid as a Presidential candidate once again as of 2006. His main goals are stated as eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, providing universal health care, and withdrawing troops from Iraq.

John Edwards is seen as a fiery hard-left Democrat with a stellar rise to fame and a powerful connection with the lower and middle classes of America. He has consistently fought for the underdog, and his family roots as one of the “common people” together with his current status as an admitted millionaire give him a unique claim to insight into class divisions within the United States. He is both an accomplished public speaker, which stems from his experience convincing juries to find in favor of his clients, and an established literary talent, putting his education to good use. He also has the benefit of experience, having gone almost all the way in the previous Presidential election.

His latest political move is to connect strongly with the victims of the Hurricane Katrina victims, having made several speeches on a tour of the area. His campaign slogan is “Tomorrow begins today.”

Joe Biden was born November 20, 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1961 from the Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware, and in 1965, from the University of Delaware in Newark. He graduated in 1968 from Syracuse University College of Law, and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969. In that year, he began to practice law in Wilmington, Delaware, until 1970, when he was also elected to the Council of New Castle County, Delaware.

His career took a dramatic turn of pace when he was elected to the U.S. Senate as the Senator from Delaware in 1972. He assumed this office in 1973, being the age of just 30. This made him the fifth-youngest U.S. Senator in the history of the United States, and he has continued to win additional terms into the present day, where he is currently the longest-serving U.S. Senator in Delaware history, the fourth-longest serving Democrat Senator, and the sixth-longest serving Senator in office.

He has served on a number of committees in the 110th United States Congress. He has acted as Chairman in the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, and has co-chaired the Caucus on International Narcotics Control. Additionally, he has served as a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Subcommittee on Antitrust Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, the Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, the Subcommittee on Immigration Border Security and Citizenship, and the Subcommittee on Technology Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Previously, he has been a Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary from 1987 to 1995, and has been a ranking minority member on that committee for a much longer period. More recently, he has been the ranking minority member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations starting in 1997, and Chairman of this committee from 2001 until 2003.

Joe Biden has been responsible for the creation of many Federal crime laws throughout his career, with a chief focus on drug crimes, crimes against women and minorities, and crimes against civil liberties. He was elemental to the formation of the commonly-known “Drug Czar” policy. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 is one of his most famous accomplishments. He has also introduced the “RAVE Act” (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act) and the “VAW Act” (Violence Against Women Act). He has also passed legislation to improve education, with college aid and loan programs, and spear-headed the “Kids 2000″ legislation to promote the accessibility of computers and the Internet to low-to-middle-income children and the vocational training of children in technology careers.

Having been a “career Senator” for 35 years spanning the terms of 7 Presidents, he has now announced his candidacy for President as of January, 2007.

He previously sought election to President in 1988, but quit the race early in December of 1987. He was replaced as the Democrat front-runner by Michael Dukakis. Previous to this, he had been nominated as a Presidential candidate in 1984, even to the point of winning one vote from the Democratic National Convention, but declined the nomination.

Politically, Joe Biden has gotten a reputation as the “sensible center of the Democratic party”. He has been neither too extreme to the left nor wavered too far from his Democratic stance. With his record, he is easily able to win votes from the “tough on crime” crowd. Women and minority voters can find something to like in his past work, and he also has some claim to call himself “pro-education”.

Most importantly, he can stand firmly on his career as a “Washington insider” who knows how to get things done. During previous debates, so common did the phrase “Joe’s right” repeat that he has now made that phrase his campaign slogan. He is very glib and well-spoken, and quick with a sound-bite for the media whenever a microphone is around. Most recently, he has been investigating into the scandal of deleted videotapes showing the interrogation of suspected terrorists, which is an issue that has been in the news and hence on voter’s minds.

Hillary Clinton was born as Hillary Rodham in October 26, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated Maine South High School in 1965 and went on to attend Wellesley College, where she majored in Political Science, and graduated in 1969. Her next educational step was to attend Yale Law School, where she received a Juris Doctor of Law degree in 1973.

During the time of her early life and education, it cannot be ignored that she was an activist and had political ambitions from the earliest age. She was a Brownie and Girl Scout, was on the student council at Maine East High School and was honored by the National Honor Society. She spent her teen years both helping to expose voter fraud in the election of President Richard Nixon and volunteered for the campaign effort of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election.

At Wellesley College she served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans organization and then in her first bout of changing from Republican to Democrat, subsequently volunteering in the campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy for Presidential nomination. Along with her leadership in many protests and canvasing efforts, she was elected President of the Wellesley College Government Association. She interned at the House Republican Conference, and wound up her college years by deliver the commencement address for Wellesley College.

At Yale Law School she served on the Board of Editors for the Yale Review of Law and Social Action, and later worked at the Yale Child Study Center. She also worked as a research assistant, performed legal duties in cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital, volunteered at New Haven Legal Services, and worked at Marian Wright Edelman’s Washington Research Project. Her work in the field of children’s health during this time earned her publication in the 1973 edition of the Harvard Educational Review.

Her post-grad work continued her record of activism for political and social causes, first as staff attorney for the Children’s Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children. She then served as a member of the impeachment inquiry staff which advised the House Committee on the Judiciary during the scandal at the end of Richard Nixon’s Presidency.

Shortly afterwards, she made the fateful decision to suppress her own ambitions in favor of getting married to another person with an active career in law and politics, in the process taking on the last name of Clinton and moving to Arkansas in 1974. However, she still remained active in society and politics, and maintained a law career. She co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, was appointed to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation and served in that capacity for four years, and through her husband’s election became First Lady of Arkansas in 1979. She was to continue in this capacity for 12 years, with a brief 2-year hiatus.

Despite her decision to become a mother, she continued to pursue an active career of political, social, legal, and even corporate work. During both her position of First Lady of Arkansas and later as First Lady of the United States during her husband’s eight years as President, her numerous achievements included chairing the American Bar Association’s Commission on Professional Women, serving on the boards of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Legal Services, chairing the Children’s Defense Fund, holding positions on the corporate board of directors for the corporations TCBY, Wal-Mart, and Lafarge.

Her career at times has been said to overshadow that of her husband. While her husband endured storms of controversy but overall persevered in his eight years as President with some substantial accomplishments of his own, Hillary Clinton chaired the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, was instrumental in the formation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program of 1997, helped create the Office on Violence Against Women, created the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and did a staggering amount of lobbying for health care, childhood, and family issues.

Hillary Clinton’s name has become synonymous with hard-left social activism, as well as being a firebrand advocate for families and children. Not the least of reasons for this is her New York Times bestseller, “It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us”, published in 1996. She currently serves as the Senator for New York since 2000, a career which so far has been too brief to distinguish. Her activities as First Lady have earned her a place of respect next to Eleanor Roosevelt in history.

For her Presidential campaign, which she announced in January of 2007, she is looking forward to a tough bout in breaking the “glass ceiling” typically symptomatic of female professionals. However, she can count on a strong support base of women, minorities, and Democrats. Amongst the more liberal Democrats, she is sometimes even referred to as “the Clinton we should have had”.