It is now widely expected that you will run for President in 2008, after successfully standing for reelection next year. By all accounts, you will enjoy the strong support of your party?s generally left-of-center primary voters. But to win the Oval Office, you will have to overcome a very different challenge ? persuading sufficient numbers of independents and perhaps even Republicans that you are the first Democrat in two generations who can safely be entrusted with the presidency in time of active, global hostilities.

Toward this end, you, your husband and other political advisors are reportedly assiduously working to demonstrate that Candidate Rodham Clinton will not be the sort of reflexively liberal partisan who would be unlikely to make such a sale. Your positions on such politically charged issues as the war in Iraq, defense spending and even immigration reform have lately been cast in terms that appear to be different from those of many of your party?s leftist standard-bearers in the Senate.

To be convincing, however, you are going to have start demonstrating leadership that genuinely sets you apart in the only way available to a sitting legislator: by casting actual votes in a manner that demonstrates your convictions.

Fortunately, this week you will likely have an opportunity to do just that by voting to help break the filibuster of John Bolton?s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. As you know, this appointment is currently being held up by such leaders of your party?s left-wing as Sens. Joe Biden, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Barbara Boxer and Chuck Schumer.

If you truly wish not only to be seen as, but to be, centrist presidential timber, you could do worse than lead Democrats in rejecting the specious arguments your liberal colleagues are making to justify filibustering Mr. Bolton.

In particular, you can demonstrate your familiarity with ? and sympathy for ? the executive branch?s grounds for refusing to go beyond what it has already done to satisfy the critics? demands for highly sensitive documents. Like George W. Bush, as President, you would not want to jeopardize highly perishable ?sources and methods? by making raw National Security Agency intercepts available to Senators other than the chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee. Like him, you would recognize that, even then, the names of Americans whose conversations with foreigners were monitored must be withheld in deference to the Privacy Act. And like Mr. Bush, you would resist efforts to obtain access to sensitive pre-decisional documents like those produced as part of executive deliberations about the nature of, and policy choices concerning, Syria?s weapons of mass destruction.

Were you not only to break with your party?s Left in allowing a vote on John Bolton?s nomination but actually to support him in such a vote, you would also endear yourself to at least three constituencies that may be important to any general election strategy in 2008: Continued...