In respect of Hillary Clinton this newspaper has a lot of differences, but her ambition isn’t one of them. On the contrary, the idea that she wants to be president is one of her most attractive qualities. Mayor Spencer’s effort to make a big deal of that in the debates over the weekend, didn’t sway us. If anything, it’s an argument for voting for John Faso for governor, so as to deprive Eliot Spitzer of the chance to appoint a senator to replace a President Clinton. Mrs. Clinton handled the matter adroitly in stating that she hasn’t made up her mind as to whether to run for president and that it’s something for voters to factor into their decisions.

Our differences with Mrs. Clinton have to do with tax policies and her penchant for nationalizing health care and with the occasional sense we get that she is wavering on the war, though on this last point she has certainly wavered less than most of the other Democratic figures on the national scene. We’d have liked to see her stand up for Senator Lieberman, one of her long-time political friends, and not to throw him over for Ned Lamont, who seems, though he is a financier and millionaire, to be infected with his family’s political demons.

By our lights it would be a good thing for New York if Mrs. Clinton ran for president. We feel the same way on the question of Mayor Bloomberg running for president. That, too, would be a good thing. A lot of politicians ran for president while holding lower offices, and it didn’t hurt them, or their constituencies, a bit. On the contrary, it can be, among other things, an opportunity to project local issues and concerns onto the national stage. It’s a remarkable thing that America could be asked to vote, in 2008, on three candidates from New York, Mayor Giuliani for the Republicans, Mayor Bloomberg as an independent, and Mrs. Clinton for the Democrats.