Democrats' best white house hope lies South. (Commentary).

If you're anything like me, you're in a sudden panic because you haven't given much thought to candidates for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination--and the election is only 23 months away.

Okay, so you're not like me. But the 2004 handicapping has already begun in Washington, where premature and meaningless speculation serves to invigorate the windbag community. Some have even begun to rank the possible Democratic contenders.

In the first rank, we find those baptized by the general consensus as strong and plausible candidates--experienced politicians who are able to raise money for a long campaign.

The withdrawal of Al Gore has reduced their number to three. They are Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina. Tom Daschle of South Dakota unexpectedly announced last week that he would not be running.

This list shows a weakness common to the typical Washington consensus. In Washington we live among senators, write about senators, hear senators drone on in our dreams. When we think about possible presidents, therefore, we think about senators.

Senators everywhere

We forget that the rest of America is less impressionable. Senators who bestride Capitol Hill as colossi almost always stumble on the road to their party's nomination (Edmund Muskie, Estes Kefauver, Edward M. Kennedy--the list is long). Even those who survive to become the nominee, as Barry Goldwater and George McGovern did, tend to lose by humiliating margins. Indeed, among the dozens of sitting senators who sought the presidency in the 20th century, only two, John Kennedy and Warren Harding, made it directly to the White House.

Voters for the past 100 years have preferred state governors. Wilson and Coolidge, the two Roosevelts, Carter and Reagan and Clinton were governors; ditto George W. Bush. The preference makes sense. Running a state government is a large and complex task, and a successful governor must demonstrate the administrative talents that make a successful president.

So let us discount the three senators mentioned as candidates. In handicapping prospective candidates, another general principle can prove useful: Voters like Democrats who act like Republicans. In fact, they like Republicans who act like Democrats, too, which is why candidate George W. Bush called himself a "compassionate conservative" (as opposed to the other kind) and held more campaign photo ops in inner-city schools than Big Bird.

Again, the preference is understandable. Voters assume that a Republican will be tough on crime, pro-business, pro-military. They want to know he'll be soft hearted as well. In the same way, they expect a Democrat to be soft hearted--generous with the poor and disenfranchised--so they seek reassurance he'll be hard headed too.

Not surprisingly, such Democrats most often come from the South, and they win when they outflank Republicans to the right. Jimmy Carter suggested President Gerald Ford was insufficiently alert to the Soviet menace in Eastern Europe. Bill Clinton boasted of his support for the death penalty and slammed President George H.W. Bush for coddling Chinese communists.

From their example, we can build the ideal Democratic nominee: a Southern moderate governor. Unfortunately for Democrats, the party lost its last southern governor of national stature this fall, when Roy Barnes of Georgia was defeated in his re-election bid.

But there is another prospect. Bob Graham of Florida is a senator--don't hold that against him--who served two successful terms as governor. His fondness for the death penalty is so intense that during his eight years in the statehouse he earned the nickname "The Killingest Governor."

Graham has formidable assets. A liberal on social issues, he nevertheless favors a cut in the capital gains tax rate. From his perch as ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he has criticized Bush for going soft on the war on terror. More important, he would likely remove that crucial swing state from the Republican president's electoral strategy.

Graham announced during the Christmas holiday that he was considering a White House run, but he's so far failed to attract the attention of the handicappers. The question for them, and for Graham, is whether his moderate policy views will displease the left-leaning Democrats who dominate voting in primaries.

He has more than 12 months to find an answer.

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist with Bloomberg News.