HOMEMAKER HILLARY: Mrs. Bill Clinton has decided on a winning campaign theme for her 2008 presidential campaign. According to Newsweek's Howard Fineman, Hillary will position herself as a

hard-eyed realist in a world of dreamers [who] knows how to get things done.... She’s the one who kept her family together—its finances, its marriage, most of its parenting function—and that is the role she will cast herself in as she tries to win the White House. After eight years of what she will call the perhaps worthy but disastrously administered dreams of George Bush, it’s time to restore some discipline. Think of the iron-willed mom in “Malcolm in the Middle.”

Let's see now. Hillary currently is viewed negatively by upwards of 40 percent of voters. That's where she starts. For better or worse, most of those who find her positively loathesome turn out to be humans of the male persuasion. How interesting, that Hillary thus thinks herself well suited to play the head-of-household role. Gee, I'd love to sit in on some of the focus-group sessions that test her campaign theme with male voters, especially divorced male voters who, oh, just perhaps already had one of those women in their lives, and, oh, perhaps are still paying alimony who works overtime to deprive him access to his own kids. And married men who want nothing more than a little solitude around the house, or as John Gray puts it, a little quiet time in their caves. This is a constituency for whom "iron-willed mom" is considered a selling point for American men? But let's give Hillary credit. For all the male voters who can't countenance the thought of her in the White House again, team Hillary is banking on prospects that many women voters will identify with her having been betrayed by Bill — the poor Hillary routine. So while she continues to polarize on personality issues, Hillary will be working overtime to identify herself with a set of issues geared to reinforce her claim that sending her back to 1600 is the way to "restore some discipline." What issue has Hillary chosen this week to get America's discipline train back on track? Nothing less than the importance of giving kids condoms. Is this what comes to mind when you think of how a strong female head of household takes a strong stand for "discipline"? Oh, this campaign is going to be such fun. Please Hillary. Run, run, run.