No one from the White House is running for President in 2008, making this the first time in 80 years that the White House is sitting out the Presidential race, today's Washington Post observes in a front-page story. The paper notes that not since 1928 has no sitting President or Vice President run for the Presidency -- a fact that has far-reaching consequences, both for the GOP candidates and for the Bush administration. All the Republican candidates will, to one degree or another, ultimately themselves from President Bush, meaning that the President has no advocate for his policies or defender of his tenure out on the campaign trail.

Craig Fuller, who was chief of staff to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush as he was getting ready for his 1988 presidential run, sums it up: "It creates a fundamentally different situation than we've known in the past. What's so starkly different about this situation is that not only is the president, by virtue of the calendar, a lame duck, but there's no champion out there on the field for him."