As I mentioned last night to Tammy Bruce and her listeners, William Goldman, the Hollywood screenwriter, is fond of saying, "Every Oscar night you look back and realize that last year was the worst year in the history of Hollywood".

Similarly, I guarantee we’ll look back on 2008 as the ugliest presidential race in a very long time. The primary season and the run-up to the election is of course, a crucible, to allow the public to see how the candidates would react under extreme pressure. And if past performance is any indication of what to expect this year and next (and it is in this case, unlike stock markets and mutual funds), then the Clinton attack machine will be dusted off and fired up to take on all who stand in Senator Clinton's way.

It's tempting to translate that, on both sides of the aisle, as meaning the last person standing will also be the most effective fighter of terrorism. If Hillary wins, hopefully going on to be "the most uncompromising wartime President in United States history", as John Birmingham wrote in the futuristic novel that Glenn Reynolds is fond of quoting. But there really is little connection between the two arenas, as Mark Steyn writes today in NRO's Corner:

I’m not unsympathetic to the premise of Ron Rosenbaum’s argument — that, compared to the happy-face banality of John Edwards’ and Barack Obama’s public personas, there’s something rather appealing about Hillary Clinton’s naked viciousness. And, indeed, after Elizabeth Edwards remarked that Hillary’s life was less “joyful” than hers, it was hard not to warm to a woman so determined to confirm her joylessness that she’s prepared to have genial Mrs Edwards kneecapped in a dark alley and forced into an abject apology.

My problem begins when Rosenbaum expands the proposition to argue that, in a field of Democrat wimps, Hill’s the one to back to stick it to the jihadists. I yield to no-one in my respect for the Clintons’ ruthless brutal demolition of Newt, and that guy who succeeded Newt for 20 minutes, and Gennifer and Kathleen and all the rest. But there’s no evidence to suggest either Clinton has any interest in applying these techniques to tougher adversaries beyond these shores. There’s a world of difference between the politics of personal destruction and the geostrategic kind. Beating up breast-cancer survivors is no indication you’ll do the same to Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il.