Not Since Teddy and FDR

According to Peggy Noonan, there have been two elections in the past 100 years where both the candidates for President were from New York....

... in 1904, when New York was the home of the hero of Oyster Bay, President Theodore Roosevelt, and reluctant Democratic nominee Alton Parker, a judge on New York's Court of Appeals, who carried only the solid South.

And then only forty years later it happened again. in 1944, when Teddy's cousin Franklin sought a fourth term against the bland and mustachioed Thomas Dewey, the New York district attorney.

As Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guiliani have both announced their intentions to run for President, Ms. Noonan announces that

Right now New York, our beloved, overtaxed, postindustrial state, is the red-hot center of the political map.

I can't say I'm all that happy about it.

These are exciting times, with rival gangs roaming uptown and down looking for money and support. The styles of the two tongs are different. Hillary's people are cool and give away nothing; they're all business. They're like a captain from an army about to crush you. Why should he bother to charm you?

Hillary is a an empty shell of a woman consumed with ambition. And Guiliani ?

Rudy's people are more like old-style New Yorkers: They are pugnacious, and if you express reservations about their guy, they give you the chin. They don't make the case or try to persuade; they tilt their chins up and try to argue you into conceding he can win. As if they think it's all on them, and if they can win the conversation, he will win the nomination.

It is a long time until the 2008 political conventions convene: August 25th in Denver, Colorado (Democratic) and September 1st in Saint Paul, Minnesota (Republican) and a lot can happen.