Note to Hillary: It's now or never.

Nearly four years ago, while on a Caribbean vacation with the extended family, one of my nephews received a phone call from New York. It was dinnertime, flying fish was on the menu, a compilation of Buddy Holly and Everly Bros. tunes played in the background and, cut off from a laptop because of a recent hurricane, I wasn't thinking politics.

That changed quickly when my triumphant relative got off the horn and said simply: "Hillary's running, Rusty, hand over the 100 bucks." A year later, Mrs. Bill's victory over dumb-squirrel Rick Lazio cost me another $50. Obviously, I've got bad mojo when it comes to laying down dough on the odious New York senator. Nevertheless, I'm predicting that Hillary decides, after Dr. Dean beats the stuffing out of his challengers in a few debates, and gaffe-a-minute Wesley Clark says no to his phantom supporters, to seek the Democratic presidential nomination.

The former First Couple has a real dilemma on their hands. Obviously, the wife had planned on a 2008 run?possibly against Jeb Bush, which would be extraordinary theater?but with the East Coast media ginning up President Bush's electoral vulnerability, the two of them, in separate residences, must be lying awake at night calculating the odds of a premature run. Seems to me that if Hillary does jump in, then a case could be made that George W. Bush is the luckiest man on the planet. Never mind the South, and contested states like Minnesota and Oregon, she might even lose California.

Not that the Clintons would agree with that prognosis. No, it's a different set of circumstances that's causing the raccoons under their eyes. For starters, Bill can't enthusiastically campaign for another Democrat, not if he wants to get back inside the White House. And, if by a bad twist of fate?another recession, the Capitol gets blown up, a personal scandal?Dean or another Democrat defeats Bush, Hillary's finished until 2012, when she'll be 65 and no longer the draw for Hollywood celebrities and fat-cat campaign donors.

Newsday's Ellis Henican is typical of ostrich op-ed columnists who are forecasting Bush's doom. Last Sunday, in a piece that is dubious about Clinton's 100th denial this year that she'll enter the fray, he wrote a piece?studded with cliches?that contained this one true sentence: "At times like these for people like her, 'no' never means no."

Here's Henican's rationale: "The so-called victory in Iraq has been badly tarnished. Saddam is still at large, as are his purported weapons of mass destruction. A growing number of Americans [mostly journalists] believe they were lied to about the reasons for fighting in the first place. And now more Americans have been killed in post-war Iraq than during the brief flurry of combat.

"The economy is still rocky. The deficit is blowing up like a big balloon. Howard Dean is the only Democrat catching fire. And Bush's approval ratings are falling like a rock."

In reality, Bush, while beaten up by the media over Iraq, has maintained a fairly steady popularity with Americans. As for the economy, I suppose Henican doesn't read anything in the newspapers but his own column, since even the New York Times and Washington Post have printed stories about a recovery kicking in. The Dow and NASDAQ?often the first indicators of an economic turnaround?have posted six and seven straight months, respectively, of gains. Consumer confidence is up. Once unemployment inches down?admittedly not a given, but likely?the economy won't be the overriding issue in the 2004 election. And while I believe that in a year's time the current Mideast chaos will have stabilized, when this country's citizens, those who bother to vote, cast their secret ballot, it's usually with one issue in mind: their wallet.

Mark Steyn, who lives in New Hampshire but writes for almost every publication in North America and Europe?often double-dipping?also thinks Hillary ought to run, considering the off-chance that Dean will win next year.

In the Aug. 31 Chicago Sun-Times, he wrote: "[Dean] is raising a ton of money on the Internet, and he's taking it in itsy-bitsy $20 donations, a rare distinction in a party that's become far too dependent on big contributions from a small number of wealthy donors. A presidential campaign has to have an element of romance, and right now Howard Dean is the only guy in the Democratic field providing any. Even those of us who've spent enough time watching him govern Vermont to dismiss him as a mean, thin-skinned, low-down, unprincipled, arrogant no-good have to salute the canniness he's shown in running his presidential campaign?

"Realistically, Hillary has to decide in the next eight weeks. If the meteoric rise of Howard Dean has stalled by then, the answer's obvious. And, even if it hasn't, you need an awful lot of $20 Internet donations to counter a couple of checks from Barbra Streisand. This is Hillary's moment. You go, girl."

Alternatively, if New York's junior senator (in name only) is true to her word, I wouldn't be surprised if Al Gore enters the contest. Bush would most likely defeat him again, but he's the White House's worst nightmare of a challenger. Dean has clearly benefited from the Democratic activists' sheer hatred of Bush?and as a longtime Bill Clinton-basher, I say fair is fair?but if Gore pulls an October entrance, watch 50 percent of Dean's support switch over to the increasingly strident former tobacco picker. After all, Gore was the one who got screwed by the Supreme Court and a hostile media (at least in the demented minds of the France-is-always-right Democrats), so why shouldn't he get "reelected"?

Should a Gore candidacy occur, Joe Lieberman can forget about a repeat veep nod. Max Cleland, perhaps, or even the self-destructive John Edwards.

I don't like North Carolina's opportunistic senator one bit, as regular readers have probably gathered. His "jes folks, Goober" jabber this year in a desperate attempt to break single digits in the polls is really grating coming from a multimillionaire who reaped his riches as a trial lawyer.

However, unlike Gore, you can't say that Edwards exploits personal tragedy for political gain. The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn, an Edwards booster, wrote a worthwhile short for the magazine's website on Aug. 28, recounting a response the candidate gave to ABC's George Stephanopoulos when asked how the death of his son "altered or reinforced your political views."

Edwards, to his enormous credit, replied: "For those of you who don't know, my son Wade, who's my oldest child, died in an automobile accident seven years ago. I appreciate you asking, it's a perfectly fair and reasonable question, [but] I would respectfully decline to answer. I think that's personal to me and personal to my family."

One can only imagine how the reptilian Gore, given a similar situation, would've responded.

Go Play Golf, Halberstam

An ancient joke, one which has many variations, goes something like this: "How can you tell when it's autumn? The leaves and Red Sox start falling." A Bosox fan shrugs it off, having heard much worse, especially in New York.

Are there are any silver linings to glean from Boston's dispiriting two-loss weekend against the Yanks at Fenway Park? Not really, unless you count the possibility that Triple-A call-up Bronson Arroyo could be an invaluable addition to the team's woeful bullpen during the wild-card stretch run. If there is a stretch run, that is.

Oh, and Jeff Nelson has really sucked for the Yanks since they got him from the Mariners.

Can't blame Manny Ramirez's absence from the lineup due to pharyngitis, or Johnny Damon's banged-up body for the losses, not when the Yanks have played almost the entire season with key players on the DL. And overheated sportswriters in both Boston and New York exaggerated Pedro Martinez's rare meltdown on Saturday afternoon, claiming he blew the "most important game of the year" for the Sox. When you think about how Bill James' "Bullpen by Committee" blew a dozen or so contests earlier in the year, Pedro's loss can be put in context.

You take it in stride: Let's see what the standings look like on Sept. 15.

Actually, the most irritating baseball moment I experienced last weekend was reading David Halberstam's gassy Aug. 29 Boston Globe tribute to the "Red Sox Nation." Granted, the long piece was a promo for his most recent book The Teammates, an admittedly decent exercise in nostalgia about Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky.

One paragraph stuck in my throat. After worrying about the condition of Pedro's fragile arm, Halberstam turns his attention to Nomar Garciaparra. He writes: "Nomar is the best position player on the contemporary team. He just might be the most valuable position player in the American League. [He did strike out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth on Sunday, but Garciaparra's a superstar, leaving Derek Jeter in the dust]. I suspect he is the best position player to come up since Yaz?perhaps the best to come up since Ted. Baseball fans, no matter what their more immediate loyalty, should think of him quite properly, as a gift to the game."

Nauseating. I doubt, should the Sox persevere and reach the playoffs, that an Oakland, Seattle, New York or God help me, Giants fan, would consider Nomar "a gift to the game." Barry Bonds is a spectacular player, an historic player, but if the Sox by some miracle face his team in the Series, I won't be thinking of Bonds as anything but a roadblock to victory. Not a damn "gift to the game."

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