Tyler Cowen posts about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the same themes that I was trying to hit last night. His post has the advantage of being both shorter and more erudite. He argues that the differences between the two are aesthetic, which I think is exactly right:

The two candidates represent two diametrically opposed portraits of the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Should we expect beauty, grace and universality, or should we derive our feel-good sentiments about politics from righteousness, confrontation, and sheer dogged persistence and feelings of ultimate desert?