A few weeks I asked why Hillary Clinton is running for re-election to the Senate. I think she’s going to get boxed in to making a pledge not to run for president in 2008 that could not be broken without serious damage to her credibility.

Well, it turns out that the media is already polling this, and it’s clear that New Yorkers want her to make a pledge:

A strong majority of New Yorkers want Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to commit to serving a full six-year term if she wins re-election next year, according to a poll released yesterday.

Clinton — who is widely believed to be planning on running for president in 2008 — made that pledge when she first won office in 2000, but she hasn’t done the same for her possible second term in the Senate, which would continue to 2012.

The Quinnipiac University poll found 60 percent of those questioned said Clinton should promise to serve out her full second term, and it revealed a bare majority of voters — 51-41 percent — don’t want her to run for president in 2008.

Even 65 percent of Democrats said she should pledge to serve six years if she’s re-elected.

But at an awards dinner at the Waldorf last night, Clinton wouldn’t make the pledge, refusing to reveal her political plans beyond 2006.

“I’m focused on winning re-election. That’s my goal,” she said.

The calculation she’s presumably making is that she can probably still win without a pledge given her current strength in the polls, which is even greater than I thought (though it’s still very early):

[T]he former first lady trounces all would-be GOP Senate challengers, according to the poll. She beats Gov. Pataki, 60-32 percent; Westchester County DA Jeanine Pirro, 62-27; former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, 63-26; and Ed Cox, son-in-law of the late President Richard Nixon, 63-25.

Cox — a Manhattan lawyer who some in the survey confused with Ed Koch — has told GOP leaders that he is interested in running against Clinton, but the others have publicly or privately ruled it out.

The poll, which surveyed 1,191 registered voters from April 28 to May 2, found Clinton with a strong approval rating — 63 percent, while only 28 percent disapproved.

Sixty-seven percent of voters — including 36 percent of Republicans — said the former first lady deserved re-election.

But even if she gets away without making a pledge, two years of slippery rhetoric and question-dodging will reinforce the meta-narrative that she is a dishonest, opportunistic politician like her husband, particularly as the media picks up on the parallels to him breaking his pledge to serve out his final term as governor of Arkansas. And if that meta-narrative shapes media coverage in 2007-2008, she has no chance in the general election.

So we’re back to same question — why run for re-election in 2006 if she wants to run for president in 2008? If she wants to run in ’08, she shouldn’t run for re-election to the Senate. And if she doesn’t want to run for president, she should pledge not to do so, which would make her re-election a slam dunk. This vacillating stance is going to hurt her chances of achieving either objective.