Uncertain from Day One

WASHINGTON — Maybe we are the ones we've been waiting for. Or maybe we are not.

Perhaps when Barack Obama uses that trippy line, he is just giving false Hopi, since the saying, which he picked up from Maria Shriver's New Age-y L.A. endorsement speech, is credited to Hopi Indians.

The passionate palaver about Hillary versus Barry rages on, with each side certain it is right about our fate if we end up with a President Obama or another President Clinton.

Hillary says Obama is "all hat and no cattle." You'd think she'd want to avoid cattle metaphors, so as not to rile up those with a past beef about her sketchy windfall on cattle futures. She could simply say he's all cage and no bird.

But is she right, that he'd be a callow leader, too trusting of Republicans, dictators and terrorists? Is Bill right, that voters should not be swayed by eloquence and excitement? (Unless he's running.)

Or is Obama right, that Hillary would ensure that the acrid mood of the past 15 years would continue to paralyze Washington, appall Americans and shrink our standing in the world?

Who knows? As a Henry James character said about art: "We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have."

Gingerly, I would like to inject a note of uncertainty into this season of certainty. Covering seven presidential campaigns has made me realize that when it comes to predicting how presidents will perform, "nobody knows anything," as William Goldman said about Hollywood.

You'd think it would be safe to vote on issues, but politicians often don't feel the need to honor their campaign promises. I covered Bush Senior saying, "Read my lips: No new taxes." I also covered him raising taxes and saying, "Read my hips." I covered W. promising a humble foreign policy and no nation-building. I also covered the Iraq fiasco.

Voters try to figure out whom they trust to have life-and-death power over them, but there's so much theatricality and artifice in campaigns you can get a false impression of who someone is.

And you never know who they will become once they move into the insular, heady womb of the White House — or how they will be buffeted by the caprice of history, and the randomness of crises.

At the very moment when politicians should be on top of the world, Ma, embraced by the voters, enhanced by the toys and levers of power, their gremlins surface. They inevitably get hit with trouble that they never could have imagined or prepared for, and that can trigger self-doubt and self-destruction and self-pity.

Why didn't JFK simply toss out the CIA plan developed under Eisenhower to send 1,200 exiles to overthrow a popular Cuban leader with a force of 200,000? He felt the need to prove himself.

Why did LBJ ignore his own solid political instincts to listen to Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk about Vietnam — falling under their stupid sway because they had been JFK's advisers?

Nixon, driven by the same pathology of envy about Kennedy and other golden boys, conspired in a political crime while coasting to re-election.

Why did W. let Cheney and Rummy lead him into hubristic disaster? He, too, needed to prove himself — and outdo Daddy. How could the "compassionate conservative" bike through Katrina?

The self-destructive impulses that consumed Bill Clinton detracted from his policy achievements and distracted him from achieving all he could have.

The press tends to swallow campaign narratives of sin and redemption, hard lessons learned.

After giving up drinking and becoming Texas governor, W. had supposedly changed from an arrogant, obdurate, Daddy-competing loser to a genial, bipartisan, mature winner. As it turned out, a total makeover is not possible after 40.

Hillary's narrative echoes W.'s: After the scalding partisanship of the '90s, she became a senator and turned the other cheek, working on legislation with Republicans who had pursued the impeachment case against her husband. She has supposedly learned from her White House mistakes on health care, Travelgate and legal issues, from her battles with the right and the press. She knows now that being obstructionist and secretive don't work.

An appealing arc, but is it true? Her campaign shake-up showed that she continues to rank loyalty and secrecy above competence and ingenuity. She is still so guarded that she began answering questions from the press and voters only after she lost Iowa.

All of us have known big shots who keep a check on their real feelings and dark tendencies until they get the top job. Then they throw off the restraints and revert to their worst instincts, bullying others and insulating themselves with sycophants.

Hillary could be ready on Day One — to make up her Enemies List and banish Overkill Bill to a cubbyhole in the Old Executive Office Building. But it's Day Two that I'm really worried about.

Maureen Dowd is a regular columnist for The New York Times.