So Many Bad Candidates For Just One Race... Will It Be Another Choice Of Lesser Evils?

Rush of Entries Gives ’08 Race Early Intensity

[Addendum (1/23/07): The Washington Post has a page that offers pictures of each potential (or already declared) presidential candidates and links to background information for each that is worth a look-see.]

In the past three days I have been queried as to whom I will support in the 2008 run for the presidential elections. Although I have been following the candidate announcements, even the ones where it is only to announce an exploratory committee, I have yet to find a candidate that tweaks my antennae.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer, on the Situation Room, reported that the CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Hilary Rodham Clinton (34%) and Barack Obama (18%) leading on the Democrat side, with John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Harry Reid, Wesley Clark, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mark Warner and Russ Feingold running at 10% or less, most much less.

Hilary Rodham Clinton is a mixed bag. I think she has a lot of chutzpah and I admire her loyalty to her husband in the face of moral (personal) betrayal, public embarrassment and ridicule, a deluge of political accusations (and some apparent shady involvements). I even admire her analytical mind and her progressive ideas on a lot of the issues. But she would bring Bubba with her if she were to get elected. While I have no great animosity toward Bill Clinton, I do think he did a disservice to our nation by embroiling himself in one controversy after another over his immorality. I really do not care that he was screwing around on Hilary, or that he has a propensity for taking advantage of women that work for him, but I do care that he is a lying, conniving scoundrel that can't seem to think with his brain when Little Willie is awake and aroused. Hilary has also proven herself to be a political opportunist, moving to New York merely to position herself for the Senate race in that state, which positioned her for the '08 presidential run. I think New York deserves her more than the rest of the nation.

Evan Bayh was smart enough to recognize no one wants him (his father would have been a damn good candidate) and put the quaybosh on running some time ago. Those of us that have some exposure to the Bayh family and political legacy know that Evan would never have the intestinal fortitude to make the hard decisions, especially those that might call upon him to do the right thing. Many Indiana pundits see him as almost a Republican.

Barack Obama is too naive and too inexperienced in national politics and foreign policy to garner my support. While I like his character, and his position on many issues, I think he should hold off on this run and seek the rune in 2016, providing he stays in the Senate for the duration and doesn't get embroiled in any scandals. But Obama has already been the subject--and victim--of a smear campaign (c.f. CNN reporting that the claims being circulated are false) that smacks of both ultra-conservative Political & Christian Right efforts, and racism and/or religious bigotry. Clinton is being hit about being a woman and Obama is being hit because of his father's and step-father's religious and ethnic (racial) heritage. One would think that he might have a chance of winning just because the opposition has already targeted him so fiercely. But I do not think he has the goods, yet.

John Kerry shouldn't consider another run as he has lost the interest of not only Democrats, but the vast majority of Americans (his wife is more interesting... and so is the ketchup her father's company makes). On top of that, I have had dealings with Senator Kerry while working on veterans issues, homelessness and poverty abatement in the Greater Lynn Area (Lynn, Massachusetts).

John Edwards seems to have some integrity, but he also has a history of making it rich by being a trial lawyer. While we all want a lawyer to be good enough to get us our case through the court system with a win, we also have an inherent suspicion of any lawyer that manages to do so... especially if he/she is busy enough to become a millionaire in the process. Then comes the question as to whether we want yet another millionaire lawyer leading our nation.

Joe Biden is so wrapped up by the big business lobbyists that his integrity is entirely in question. The matter of his integrity goes all the way back to issues involving the Saudi and OPEC petro-corporate dollars that twisted and turned our politics, economy and daily lives in the early 1970s (c.f. Emerson, Steven; The American House of Saud), not to mention that almost every big bank, credit card company, finance house, insurance company, manufacturing firm, holding company or other big business has some incorporated entity operating our of Biden's home state of Delaware. So, in my view, Joe Biden is more likely to bend over backwards for big business than to represent the average American.

Harry Reid has some shady business deals to explain and probably should refrain from running for the good of the party and the good of America. He'll do a lot more good as a Senate leader. Besides, Harry lacks charisma. If someone were to put a cardboard cutout and a taped message in front of a podium at a news conference, I doubt anyone would know Harry wasn't there.

Bill Richardson is an interesting man with some potential. However, he has not really done anything to accentuate his positives and bring his name to the forefront. If Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia, throws his hat in the ring, no one will even remember Richardson was once governor of New Mexico. Kaine, on the other hand, has charisma, intelligence, political savvy (won the gubernatorial race in a red state), and knows how to make personal contact with voters... and he is a progressive that is in touch with his own spirituality and the spiritual/political principles embedded and embodied in the Constitution. But Kaine has of yet not thrown his hat in the ring.

Russ Feingold doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell. Neither does Mark Warner (who is 80 years old and thinking about retirement), which is why he chose to refrain from the fray.

Wesley Clark has the experience, the intelligence and an understanding of command and control of large organizations and major operations. I like Clark's positions on almost everything he has written about. But for some reason the Democrats have put Clark out to pasture and denied him a seat at the table. This is a damn shame because I think his involvement in the race will race the stakes, the caliber of the candidates on both sides, and raise the bar regarding dealing with issues confronting the average American. Clark's military experience would also be useful when it comes to undoing a lot of the damage the Bush administration has done to our nation's reputation and ability to maintain an adequate military... without invading other nations unlawfully, exhibiting signs of fascism, or spying on innocent people.

Dennis Kucinich has a lot of support in parts of the mid-west and on the west coast, especially throughout the Bay Area. Like Wesley Clark, Kucinich would raise the bar on a lot of issues. But I have doubts that Kucinich can build the momentum to get the job done.

On the Republic side of the race we have Rudy Guiliani (32%) in the forefront, with John McCain (26%) in the second position. Newt Gingrich is mentioned as a candidate, but has not declared as of yet. Other Republican hopefuls include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Frist, Chuck Hagel, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, George Allen, Jeb Bush, Mark Sanford, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Sam Brownback.

Rudy Guiliani is a zealot that happened to have fame and success thrust upon him. If you ask me, he got a lot of credit for the hard work and dedication of a lot of New York City's finest heroes. While Rudy deserves some accolades, the real work was done by the dedicated firemen, police officers, city department managers, and folks that have lived in, worked for and understood how NYC operates long before Guiliani was on the scene. Rudy's reputation as a prosecutor is of a similar nature. His courtroom wok stole the thunder and the glory of those men and women that actually did the investigating, under cover work, arrests and grunt work. Guiliani is just this side short of being an extremist among GOP law and order hawks that want to throw people into jail and forget where they put the keys... unless it is to unlock the door of the cell and open the death penalty chamber.

Arnold Schwarznegger needs a constitutional amendment passed before he can run. I do not think he will even get the attention of the current congress to propose such a bill or idea.

Newt Gingrich would be a step backward and deeper into hell than what we have endured with George W. Bush. Gingrich is deeply entrenched in his ultra-conservative ideology and is so enmeshed with the Religious Rights that it is practically an incestuous relationship. Given the amount of professional, political and personal hypocrisy Gingrich has offered us, I doubt that anyone outside of the Religious Right are giving him any thought.

Bill Frist has also shown his commitment to the Religious Right and hypocrisy. While he is a medical doctor with a reputation for being very successful, he appears to be one of those doctors that have emphasized the money over the profession, or caring for people that could not afford to pay for his services. His entrenched positions on health care speak volumes about his regard for the big business of medicine rather than the fundamental right to be provided some modicum of decent medical care. I personally know physicians that view him as a sell out... and that was before he became a member of congress.

Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice are so tainted by their participation in the violation of our Constitution, the Halliburton/KBR no bid contracts that have produced more waste and fraud than results, and the failure of foreign policy on the whole, that no one in their right mind would consider them. Besides, we certainly do not want anyone that can't keep his finger off the trigger and cannot aim properly to be running the nuclear show. Condie's loyalty to Bush no matter how silly, ignorant, reticent or plain stupid he has shown himself to be is an indication that, despite her advanced degrees, she ain't too smart. While Colin Powell redeemed himself by standing up to Bush and company, he is still tainted by the involvement in the Bush administration and his initial loyalty to Bush before he began to question the ludicrousness of the Bush plan and doctrine.

George Allen sort of screwed the pooch already. His apparent enthusiasm for racially-motivated free speech as part of his campaign definitely places his aspirations for higher office in the hopper rather than in the ring, especially when some of his friends--some of whom are African-American--agree with the assessment that this isn't the first time this has been an issue.

Jeb Bush has the bad luck of being George W.'s brother and George H.W.'s son. His performance as Florida's governor has been notable, except when he violated the Florida and US Constitutions to sign in a law specifically designed for a single case (Terri Schiavo) and used religious ideology to interfere with spousal rights, religious freedom and violated the separation of church and state doctrine, the separation of powers doctrine, and the very principles of freedom we hold dear. Given his brother's performance in regard to trampling our civil liberties, and Jeb's propensity for doing the same, and his father's history of violating our laws (c.f. Iran-Contra Affair), we would be foolish to consider putting another Bush into high office.

Mitt Romney is an opportunist. His move to Massachusetts to run for governor was nothing less than manipulating the system. As a native and former resident of Massachusetts, I was not impressed by his administration of the Commonwealth. In my view, he forgot the concept of "common" and went for the "wealth." On his watch, more people of average and low income moved out of Massachusetts--especially from the bigger cities--than in any other time in the history of the Commonwealth. People making less than $120,000 per year cannot afford to live comfortably in Boston, along the South Shore, most of the North Shore, and many of the western suburbs. We must also remember that the Big Dig fiasco and scandals occurred on his watch and the watch of his two predecessors, both of whom were Republicans. If I suggested that he move back to his native state, no one in Massachusetts would raise much of a stink.

Mike Huckabee is a really popular governor from Arkansas. But take a look at the state of affairs in Arkansas. Some of the poorest counties in the nation are located in that state. Poverty is rampant. The Religious Right dominates state politics. Taxes are steep and deep. Education suffers (at least it has been). Several surrounding states are draining revenues from Arkansas because a great number of Arkies visit the casinos in those states for jobs and gambling. Mississippi is draining Arkansas of revenues that could be used to fund education, land improvements, affordable housing and anti-poverty measures. The crops that were once the mainstay of Arkansas's agro-business, are now waning in the marketplaces. Huckabee has charisma, but not as much as Bill Clinton had, and a lot of baggage as well.

Mark Sanford is very popular in South Carolina. But he really hasn't done much on the national scale. He would make an interesting GOP candidate, but his full colors and ideas are still not know to everyone. He might be in the same boat as Obama in that he needs some more national and international experience to bring him up to speed before he can reach for the Oval Office.

Sam Brownback is from Kansas. He has some ultra-conservativism in him and some affiliation with the Religious Right. But his candidacy is flat and he will have to really work to bring his campaign to the forefront.

Anyway, that's my take on things thus far. Here's what the NYT has to say:

Two years before the next president is inaugurated and a full year before the first vote is cast, the contest for the White House is off to a breathtakingly fast start, exposing an ever-growing field of candidates to longer, more intensive scrutiny and increasing the amount of money they need to remain viable.

On Sunday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, held her first campaign event, highlighting her focus on health care a day after declaring her plans to run. Another Democrat, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, entered the fray, the eighth member of his party to do so. And the day was not terribly different in its pace of activity from many others in recent weeks.

The scale and swiftness of the action has the potential to upset the traditional timetables and conventions of presidential campaigning.

John Weaver, a senior adviser to Senator John McCain’s presidential effort, said the intensified announcement season and compressed primary calendar would force campaigns to develop a strong national apparatus and well-organized field efforts state by state.

“It makes it nearly impossible for a dark horse candidate to break out of the pack and challenge the front-runner(s) and thus isn’t healthy for the process,” Mr. Weaver wrote in an e-mail message on Sunday. “All of these states, who are moving up early, want to play and have an impact. But oddly enough, it ultimately will limit the legitimate candidate choices for the nation at large in the primary process.”

The candidates could be forced to move more quickly to take positions on big issues, stripping them of the chance to run on more gauzy platforms in the early stages and therefore exposing them to more direct criticism from rivals, interest groups and the news media. They will face earlier encounters with one another — New Hampshire and South Carolina are planning full-scale debates this spring — that will require them to display both policy expertise and a comfort level in front of the cameras.

They will be getting intensive scrutiny from opposition research operations, the news media and the public for that much longer, increasing the chances that a gaffe or position change could harm their campaigns. Deep into competition for experienced staff members, most candidates are already putting together operations in multiple states.

Kevin Madden, press secretary for the exploratory committee set up by former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a Republican, said his organization was already “beginning to put our teams together” for the early contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, Michigan and several states beyond. “It’s happened at a very advanced pace,” Mr. Madden said, “but you can’t complain and wring your hands. You just have to work harder, faster.”

Because they do not want competitors to be raising money unchallenged, more candidates are declaring their intentions earlier, which in turn means the entire field needs more money to sustain campaigns for a longer time.

There are now a dozen serious contenders from both parties competing in a presidential race that for the first time in more than half a century will not include an incumbent — either the president or the vice president — on the ballot or even a definitive front-runner.

“Crowded fields force early announcements,” said Jennifer Palmieri, an adviser to John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who is seeking the Democratic nomination. “Candidates are concerned there will not be enough oxygen left for them if they wait too long. Having crowded fields in both parties has exacerbated this phenomenon.”

Just hours after Mrs. Clinton made her candidacy official on Saturday, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas joined the race for the Republican nomination. Last week, Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, opened a presidential exploratory committee, emphasizing the wide-open nature of the race.

The early start of the presidential race may make it difficult for the new Democratic leaders in Congress to generate public support and media attention for their agenda. Seven sitting members of the House and Senate have declared their candidacies and several others are said to be considering it, distracting them from legislative business and drawing news coverage away from Congress and out onto the campaign trail.

John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton and president of the Center for American Progress, said some of the early candidates surely recall the lesson of Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the Democrat who waited to jump into the last presidential race until the fall of 2003.

Given the lateness of his entry, and his limited resources, General Clark decided to skip the Iowa caucuses and focus on the New Hampshire primary. Iowa became an unexpectedly fierce contest, with John Kerry emerging as a winner and quickly rolling on to victories in New Hampshire and other early primary states.

“You need to get a foothold early and organize and get people to rally around you and your message,” Mr. Podesta said, “and the need to build momentum is real.”

The candidates and the early primary states are chasing each other in a mad circle, with two new states, Nevada and South Carolina, squeezing into the first weeks of the primary calendar. A number of other states, including California, New Jersey, Michigan and Illinois, are considering moving up their primaries so that they are not left out of the nominating process. With their expensive media markets, these states could quickly bankrupt candidates who have trouble raising money.

The intensity of the early action is fueled in part by President Bush’s political weakness, brought on largely because of the unpopularity of the war in Iraq.

“If Bush were doing well and had a continuing ability to get things done and command the national stage, I think there would be far less focus on the campaign,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian.

While presidential campaigns have been getting gradually longer over the past few decades, the acceleration in the 2008 cycle is particularly pronounced. The first President Bush announced his candidacy for the 1988 Republican nomination in October 1987; the eventual Democratic nominee in that election, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, had declared six months earlier.

Bill Clinton formally announced his candidacy for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination on Oct. 3, 1991, about three and a half months before the Iowa caucuses. George W. Bush announced his exploratory committee for the 2000 presidential race in March 1999 and began his campaign in June 1999.

By comparison, Mr. Edwards of North Carolina, the 2004 vice-presidential nominee, has traveled to Iowa 16 times since the beginning of last year, building his organization there in hopes of scoring an early triumph that carries him into the next contests.

“The earlier process will reward candidates who truly have a succinct, credible, authentic and passionate message which can sustain itself over the long nature of the campaign,” said Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004.

He also said that in 2007 candidates would be rewarded by scoring points in “nonvoting events” such as media attention, their standings in the polls and the size and response of crowds, because those sorts of factors will help winnow the field more than the primaries still a year away.

Despite the intense focus by most candidates on showing that they can raise the money to run a long and expensive campaign, having a big bank account, Mr. Dowd argued, may actually not be as important in the early stages of this presidential cycle as it was in previous ones.

“It’s for two reasons: the early process will not involve paid media as much, and new technology allows little cost to talk directly to voters,” he said. “And the early process will make it more important for a campaign to know how to respond to knowable and unknowable events in next 12 months.”

Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Representative Richard A. Gephardt in 2003 and Senator John Kerry in 2004, warned that candidates and their aides, no matter how tired they become, would have to stay on their toes because any misstep might be captured on tape and circulated on the Internet.

“Every move they make in Iowa and New Hampshire will be on YouTube,” Mr. Elmendorf said. “The only certainty by January ’08 is that people will be pretty tired.”

Besides taking a toll on the declared candidates, the length and cost of current campaigns also deters potential entrants. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia were considered among the brightest Democratic prospects, but both declined to run. They cited the crowded field, the endless burden of fund-raising and the brutal personal cost of today’s presidential campaigns.