HANOVER, N.H. -- I am here in the student union at Dartmouth waiting to see if Hillary Clinton has chance to smother this Democratic presidential race before it begins. I just came from a dinner with a top strategist from a major campaign (not Hillary's) who put her chances if of winning the nomination at 8-out-of-10. And yet, having been through this drill more times than I can count, I find it hard to believe that this race will end before it really has begun. Somebody is going to challenge Clinton for real. The physics of politics and media make it inevitable. The question is whether the main challenger is Sen. Barack Obama or, as seems increasingly possible, somebody else.

   Right now the Democratic and Republican parties have changed personas. The Democrats usually tear each other limb from limb; the GOP generally has an orderly coronation. Right now, Hillary is approaching the throne all but unscathed; the Republicans have only begun to go after each other in earnest. The GOP has no ideological unity; the Democrats have a lot.

Fred Thompson once joked with reporters that he's an "open book," and he wasn't kidding. Unlike many prominent former senators--Al Gore, John Edwards, Bill Frist--Thompson put his eight years of Senate records up for public review two years ago. The collection, on file at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, includes more than 400 boxes of personal letters, campaign memos, photographs and internal-strategy files on everything from his investigation into Bill Clinton's 1996 fund-raising to dealings with reporters. As NEWSWEEK reported this week, there are plenty of documents about politics and policy, some that GOP voters might not like.

And then there's the interesting stuff.

Let's face it: Being a second-tier presidential candidate blows. It's hard to raise money. You have to travel on the cheap, unlike some of the other presidential hopefuls who navigate the primary states on charter planes and luxury buses. It's not even guaranteed that you'll get much face time during a presidential debate. Some candidates think the way to momentum is to get the media's attention, but even that's not easy, in spite of the fact reporters happen to love them a gabby presidential hopeful.

Case in point: Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, who has tried to rev up his campaign by offering up tough-talking one-liners about how he's the only real conservative in the race. The former Republican National Committee chairman generated a little buzz a few weeks ago by deriding the top three GOP frontrunners as "Rudy McRomney" because he claims they don't share the "core conservative principles" of his party. During the first debate, Gilmore used his brief moment in the spotlight--he's averaged about five minutes of talking time at the debates, about half what the frontrunners get--to mention the address of his campaign Web site, in hopes of generating some buzz. "Gilmore for President dot com," the governor said during the South Carolina debate three weeks ago.

Is it working? Probably not, considering his aides sent out not one, but two middle of the night e-mails to reporters here in New Hampshire offering up the former governor for interviews.