Potomac High

At least he was not like that crazy Al Gore, who had been the ultimate goody-goody but who had grown a beard, made a film and dropped out to attend the School Without Walls.

The high-school musical played out in real life this week—and over the most serious of issues, the war in Iraq.

Edwards, in what amounted to the start of the ’08 Democratic race, took a shot at Senate-based candidates (though he himself is a former senator). “Silence is betrayal,” he said. “Speak out and stop the escalation now. You have the power, members of Congress, to prohibit this president from spending money to escalate this war.”

Senator Clinton chose to take it personally, sending her master spinner, Howard Wolfson, out to denounce Edwards for cheap-shot rhetoric and pie-in-the-sky thinking.

The next day Obama filed papers to join the race, promising to change The System (with the attendant implication that no one embodies The System more than a Clinton). Obama added that we are “mired in a tragic and costly war that should never have been waged”—one that Clinton voted to authorize in 2002.

Responding to the Edwards and Obama moves, Clinton came armed to a press conference in the Capitol with insights gleaned from a quick trip to Iraq and with a new plan of her own: a cap on troop strength, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2007—and a new mechanism to pressure the Iraqi government to crack down.