For all the talk about the here and now in Congress, the buzz of the presidential race was loud.
With star-powered names like Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain walking the Capitol corridors, the overtones of the next election were unmistakable as Democrats basked in their newfound control of the House and Senate.
Yet, the high-profile presidential wannabes sought to put the focus on their current jobs -- rather than the one they want on Jan. 20, 2009.
"I wish everyone would take a deep breath and worry about tomorrow and the next two days and the next two weeks and the next two months instead of the next two years," Democratic Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, said on Thursday after being sworn in for a second term.
Republican Senator John Mc-Cain, begged off questions about the timing of an official presidential announcement, saying the coming weeks would be largely devoted to Iraq policy and his new post as the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"We're kind of focusing a lot of attention on all that right now," he said.
And, Democratic Senator Ba-rack Obama punted presidential queries and emphasized the need to make progress this year on several policy areas, including energy and health care.
"A couple of issues we talked about ... are on everybody's minds. And we should come up with some reasonable solutions," he said after Republicans and Democrats held a private meeting in the Old Senate Chamber.
Still, the presidential chatter filled the halls. It no doubt will persist through the year, given that Congress is filled with presidential hopefuls -- some political celebrities and others little-known long-shots -- in the first wide-open White House race in a half-century.
Running for president from the House and Senate is extremely difficult, in part because lawmakers have voting records that can be picked apart by opponents and used to twist a candidate's positions.
Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 and a potential 2008 candidate, learned that cruel lesson when President George W. Bush's re-election campaign seized on the senator's votes from his decades-long career to argue that he habitually flip-flopped on various issues. Kerry lost the race.
The last senator to win the presidency was Senator John Kennedy in 1960.
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