A little over a year from now, we have a good chance of having one of the following: the first black president (Obama), the first female president (Clinton), the first Mormon president (Romney), the oldest president to take office (McCain), the first Italian-American president (Giuliani), the first New York City mayor to become president (Giuliani).

Or it could be Huckabee or Thompson. (Don’t count him out in the South, especially in this unpredictable year.)

What is the New York Times’s problem? The day after the Iowa caucuses, the front-page headline was

OBAMA TAKES IOWA
IN BIG TURNOUT;
HUCKABEE VICTOR

This morning, it’s

CLINTON IS VICTOR,
DEFEATING OBAMA;
McCAIN ALSO WINS

Yes, Clinton’s win was a surprise, and therefore more “newsy” than McCain’s win. But Obama’s and Huckabee’s wins last week were both newsworthy and yet the headline made Huckabee’s win seem like an afterthought.

I’m sorry, but hiring Bill Kristol while openly rooting for Democrats on your front page is not what “balance” means.

You know what — if I had to choose between Clinton upsetting Obama, and Romney upsetting McCain, I’d choose the former. I respect John McCain and I loathe Mitt Romney.

[Morning update: I shouldn’t have said “loathe.” In the past eight years, I’ve known what it truly means to loathe a politician. (Well, two.) I don’t think anything will ever match what I feel toward the current administration.]