Back in the early, heady days of the 2000 Republican primary, John McCain was the media darling, cruising aboard the “Straight Talk Express”, jockeying for front runner status, buoyed largely by party moderates after the New Hampshire primary. True, GWB held some swagger after the Iowa Caucus, with a critical test looming among party conservatives in South Carolina. But the Palmetto State contest was also touted as an opportunity for McCain to cut into Bush’s core support; a strong second place showing would be adequate, but a win among conservative bible belt Christians could have derailed the Texas Governor’s run.

Along the way, Bush picked up an easy primary victory in often-overlooked Delaware, but the momentum-maker was to be South Carolina. What ensued instead was an exchange of sordid charges and below-the-belt innuendo that sullied both candidates leading up to each campaign’s Evangelist summit at Bob Jones University. When GWB emerged beatified by the Christian right, and with doubt cast on McCain’s conservative bona fides and religious fervor, McCain’s candidacy slipped. He rallied briefly in Arizona and Michigan, but the road ahead beckoned favorably for the conservative standard bearer, and McCain was buried by late March. In a post-Bill Clinton era, the moderate McCain was overwhelmed by the party’s right, amped up in no small part by the coming-into-its-own of conservative talk radio.

Now Hillary Clinton’s 2008 primary contest with Barack Obama is no parallel to McCain’s defeat in 2000; it was by far a closer, more protracted race than the Bush-McCain affair. But the dissipation of her overstated support of party moderates by a more organized, more energized, more smitten, blended constituency of youth, ethnicity and the disenfranchised-turned-hopeful voter was a methodical dismembering of a front runner from which a successful return, even eight years later, raises legitimate doubt.

By the time John McCain muscled his way through a mostly weak field to the party’s nomination in 2008, saddled as he was with the baggage of a failed Bush administration for the general election, he appeared a tired and used-up candidate, not one able to compete intellectually or telegenically with the effervescent junior Senator from Illinois. And it showed. It appeared to many that John’s best chance came and went in 2000, some would say now to the country’s detriment. Perhaps a different candidate from that ’08 field, a fresh Mitt Romney for instance, may have been able to foretell the looming financial crisis and navigate it to better advantage by demonstrating a facile set of economic and business solutions that candidate Obama could not counter. Mr. McCain certainly did not.

In a similar circumstance, Ms. Clinton now seeks her day in the sun, her just desserts as the one who bowed out gracefully, waited her turn, and is deservedly due. But as with McCain in ’08, there is a specter of weakness about her. Almost as though her time has come and gone. She, too, is saddled, and in a far more proactive fashion, with the stigma of a failed administration; or at best, tangentially linked with the record of a President with low approval ratings. Her accomplishments, in and out of office, are far more difficult to define now than her resume’ was in 2008, when it was then only compared to the paucity of the front runner’s pedigree.

It is eight years later. She looks every bit of it. And to be blunt, even if she does have the stamina for a run, appearances matter. There is an unhealthy pall about her, maybe it’s the weariness, the obesity, the onset of arthritis, the lingering effects of a mysterious concussing event, but she does not appear sharp, she does not appear sturdy on her legs, she does not appear passionate, she does not appear on her game.

Most of all, she does not appear presidential. And like John before her, she can be had.