"IS HILLARY SHOWING HER AGE?

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

January 5, 2006 -- The smartest thing George W. Bush did as he pursued the presidency in 2000 was to jettison his father's former campaign team and start his own bid for the White House from scratch. He realized that times had changed in the 12 years that had elapsed since his Dad was elected, and that the old guard would be set in the old ways. So, he reached out for new people with new ideas — people Dad hadn't known well back in 1988, like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes — to pilot him to victory in 2000.

But that's not the model that the next heir apparent has chosen.

Hillary Clinton now seems wed not just to the 1992 candidate himself, but to his staff, advisors, supporters, tactics, strategy, and timing as well. As this nearly 60 year old candidate faces younger and savvy challengers in Barak Obama, 45, and John Edwards, 53, she seems to be showing her age rather than grasping just how much the political world has changed since she last trod the presidential campaign trail.

According to recent news articles, she apparently seemed genuinely surprised that the 2008 presidential race has heated up so early. (Wake up Hillary!) Evidently, she's been grousing to potential supporters that she doesn't understand why she can't follow the more leisurely schedule her husband first pursued, when he waited to announce his candidacy until the fall of 1991. Her plan was to do the same thing. Now, with the increasing strength of Edwards and Obama, she's being forced to get into the race and compete. This was something that she hadn't planned on; not at all.

With Hillary's coy insistence for the past year that she hadn't made up her mind about whether to run for president, she could hardly start publicly campaigning. But while she was playing dumb about her candidacy, Edwards was cleverly and effectively building the support of Democrats in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire — the early primary states. Now Edwards is in first place in Iowa and Hillary is in fourth. He's tirelessly crisscrossing the state. She hasn't been there in years. There's a lesson there.

Hillary appears to have been completely taken by surprise by the boomlet for Obama. He's now tied with her in New Hampshire and ahead of her in Iowa. The Obama....

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