"As a senator, I will spend two years doing everything in my power to limit the damage George W. Bush can do."

I'd be a hell of a lot more impressed with her sincerity if she had spent the last six years doing the same thing instead of trying to figure out which way the wind was blowing. I realized that as a freshman member of the minority in the Senate, there wasn't much she could do, but I was underwhelmed. And it's not like she can complain that the press didn't report on what she did do over the last six years.

I know it might seem a little picky to expect politicians not to act so much like, well, politicians I guess, but this woman seems to have done every thing possible to be all things to all people so that I doubt her actual commitment to anything or anyone but herself.

I'll give her a chance to make her case, I'll listen to (or read, more likely) what she has to say and hold my decision until I've heard enough to decide, but I think that those who think that voting for Hillary will bring back the golden years of Bill will be sorely disappointed. Nothing I've seen so far leads me to believe that she has his skill at getting people to do what they don't want to do and like it.

If she wants to "chat" fine, but I'll need to hear something more than warmed-over DLC positions. I'll want to hear principled positions, even if I don't agree with them all. In short, she's going to need to figure out who she really is and tell me straight.

"No one would ever say that a male presidental candidate was too ambitious."

Sure I would. I say it about any person who's letting ego get ahead of proven ability. Hence the modifier "too". You're quite right that ambition itself, in proper measure, is a quality, not a fault. It's the reason that we came down out of the trees all those millions of years ago.

This is not to say the Hillary could never be a good president, hell it's not even to say that she wouldn't be one starting in January, 2009. But as of right now, with current knowledge, she and some of the other candidates, notably Obama and (mentioned on another site) Jim Webb, would be batting above their league.

It's possible that I could be wrong, that possibility will play out as the campaign goes on. It's early days yet and I'm willing to let anyone pleasantly surprise me. It's just that as I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, she'll have to work hard to convince me given her past performance. It will take action on her part in the Senate, not a "chat", unless she means it in the original, World War I, sense of the word.