What is the secret to Huck's success? You've got to be kidding. It can be summed up in two words: Hill and Bill. In voting for Huck the Clinton-haters get to vote, one, against Hillary Clinton (who is bound to be the Democratic candidate, no matter what some people might think), and two, against Bill Clinton, whom they never tire of castigating. Huck is the anti-Clinton. He hails from Hope and was once governor of Arkansas, but he is no Rhodes Scholar. In fact, he is no kind of scholar at all. The we-hate-Bill brigade sees a vote for Huck as a repudiation of everything that Bill, and by extension Hillary, stands for. They don't know Huck, and they don't care (they should, but they don't). In this regard, they are myopic. A Clinton is running for office. The red flag has been raised. The haters charge--blindly. Oh, yes, it's really that simple.

I have loved Stephen Sondheim's music since "West Side Story." Of course he only wrote the lyrics to that one and "Gypsy," but he proved he could write hummable tunes with "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," a toe-tapper if there ever was one. After "A Little Night Music," I lost track of Sondheim for a few years, until a friend of mine bought the cast recording of "Sweeney Todd." He liked to get drunk and play this thing over and over, presumably to accent his depression. I hated it. But then I saw a production of it with Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou on television and fell in love with Lansbury's performance. Yes, I had heard her on record, but you really have to see her to appreciate what she does with the role of Mrs. Lovett. So I went back and listened to the soundtrack again, and I still hated it. The lesson being that this particular bit of staging requires a deft musical hand, and an incredible talent like Lansbury in the lead to work. Can Helena Bonham Carter pull it off? I'll suspend judgment until I've seen the film. Can Depp overcome the essentially wooden nature of Sweeney's character, at least as written by Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler? I doubt it. But Mrs. Lovett's the whole show anyway, and it all rests with her.

Hillary looks better to me all the time. I look forward to seeing her, me, and the country all grow old together.

Huckabucks is guilty of one of the oldest crimes in the book (the book being Homer): Hubris. He likes to play god. And like the gods of old (not this new-fangled Christian god), he exacts revenge when slighted and rewards when appeased. This is the way he operated in Arkansas. You want a pardon? You got a pardon! Now what can you do for me? And when he could combine his hatred for the Clintons with his love of playing god, then so much the better. The people who worshipped at his altar came away with benisons (read pardons, in the case of Dumond and others); the people who dared question his majesty were punished (e.g. the staff at the Arkansas Times). In other words he is a pagan, not a Christian at all. He is Dathan, not Moses (that's Edward G. Robinson, not Charlton Heston, to the uninitiated). He promises his followers the Golden Calf, along with a mortgage on a triple-wide. The problem is, the Golden Calf is just one of Huck's old fat suits.

I'm sorry you were bored. Gee. Have you ever thought about changing jobs? I may be mistaken, but once upon a time, long before reporters and anchors and pundits were being paid millions of dollars to swig brandy and exchange quips about this candidate's hair or that candidate's laugh, some stalwart souls in the fourth estate actually enjoyed their jobs and went after the meat in a story with a vengeance. At least that's the way it seemed to me. Now all the press consists of is a gaggle of Marie Antoinettes whose attitude seems to be, "Let them eat scandal!" Get up off the chaise longue and take a look around. The world's still a pretty intersting place, if you just give it a chance. Heck, there might even be a decent story in the candidates' health care plans, or, I don't know, their vision of a post-Bush American foreign policy. "Honesty and wit are so rarely combined," says Monsieur Bellegarde in the French film "Ridicule." Exactement, mon amis.

I got in on the second half of the debate, enough to see Alan Keyes embarrass himself. My old pal Huckabee was amazing. He sounded like the head cheerleader at an Up With People rally. He couldn't have been sunnier had he been doing one of those coca cola commercials from the early '70s ("I'd like to teach the world to sing," etc). And, am I mistaken, or has the good Lord given the old reprobate back some of his hair? Where's the bald spot we in Arkansas had all come to know and love? Gone the way of his apidpose tissue, I suppose (do hormone injections come with bariatric surgery?) No, he didn't manage to offend anyone, and, yes, Keyes was embarrassing. But I'd take Keyes' honesty (for all his wrongheadedness) over Huckabee's snake oil charm anyday.

If I lived in an alternative universe and were forced to vote Republican, that is.

All this negativism has helped me see the light. When Mrs. Clinton is president, she should not, as I have previously suggested, appoint Barak Obama to her cabinet--she should appoint Oprah.

The question has now become, which strong woman would you rather see in the White House: Hillary or Oprah?