Remember when Hillary Clinton was the inevitable Democratic Party nominee for president?

She probably still is inevitable, but it’s not as if Democrats have decided to clear a path for her. Perhaps emboldened by Comrade Bernie Sanders, the communist senator from the People’s Republic of Vermont, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (a former Republican U.S. senator and independent) have now entered the Democratic race.

I’ve written before that governors make better presidents because they actually have to make decisions and govern instead of — well, actually, in addition to — speeches. O’Malley’s main problem is that he was mayor of Baltimore, and the current state of Baltimore is not exactly a bragging point on one’s résumé. Chafee has apparently jettisoned all his non-liberal points of view, which doesn’t bode well for his post-primary future in the unlikely event he gets the Democratic nomination.

(Clinton, whose campaign hasn’t exactly been setting the political world on fire of late, suffered a substantial blow this morning when Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett endorsed her for president. Milwaukee is becoming Baltimore without the Atlantic Ocean and crabcakes.)

As for the Republican side, there are probably too many to count, but the most recent addition is former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Perry is a good addition to the race if for no other reason than the stark economic contrast between Perry’s Texas and the rest of the nation. When one state has more job growth than the entire nation does, and the nation’s economic policies are mostly a leftist mess, at least voters can’t say they don’t have a choice.

Perry stands out from the Democratic field in an additional way. He is a veteran who apparently served as a mentor for Marcus Luttrell, the lone survivor Navy SEAL whose story was told in the film “Lone Survivor.” (Which I watched on a bus on the way to a college basketball game. It’s powerful, though difficult to watch even if you don’t know the ending.) There are no veterans running for the Democratic nomination, unless U.S. Sen. James Webb (D–Virginia) gets into the race.

Perry’s relationship with Luttrell says a lot about Perry’s character, and in that sense perhaps he stands out the most from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in actually possessing laudable character in contrast to Obama and the amoral Clinton(s). Perry has also suffered from the same claim made of Ronald Reagan, Tommy Thompson, George W. Bush (Perry’s predecessor as governor) and Scott Walker of not being very smart. (That’s despite the fact that Perry and that quartet comprises four terms as president and all or part of 14 terms as governor. As high school graduate Harry S. Truman put it, the world is run by C students.) Clinton and Obama are supposedly smart, and where has that gotten us?

I have a Facebook Friend who has gone over the top in his support of Perry. (My Friend is not a fan of Walker.) I am not endorsing Perry or anyone else, but based on what I’ve seen so far, Perry would be a substantial improvement over the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.