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If the "road to hell" is "paved with "good intentions," then the road to the White House is paved with "good candidates." In my several decades of presidential voting, I can report one of the most dismal success rates in existence-I've only ever helped elect two people president, and truth to tell, I wasn't that crazy about either. But I plug away, and have always taken a pretty keen interest in politics, so I can say that as a general rule, the candidates who really excite people at the beginning of a race, are usually not the ones that end up facing off in November. The primary system, for all its many flaws, is basically a consensus process, in which a number of candidates from each of the two major parties see-saw in the polls until the one that emerges with his (note pronoun!) party's nomination is usually the guy about whom the least amount of negative things can be said-and that's just from within his (note pronoun-again!) own party. Early as it is in the next presidential cycle-the one that won't end until November 2008, there's already a lot of chatter, both idle and serious, about contenders. In her "Going Out" column this month, Maria Heil raises the specter of Hurricane Hillary as the Democratic Party's eventual nominee. With good reason, Maria points out that the junior senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, could be her party's standard bearer. Also with good reason, Maria shudders at the notion of such an anti-gun candidate. It's important to note, however, that Sen. Clinton has a lot going for her chances-at least on paper, and in these early days. First and foremost at this stage, she has fiercely loyal support from several important constituencies within her party, the kind of people who will keep her name out front, work for her at the grassroots level, contribute money and make sure-should she want it-that her name is on important primary state ballots. Clinton, the prototypical Desperate Housewife, also has a huge advantage in name recognition. "Hillary Clinton," just as a name on an early poll, is much better known that everyone else who's being bruited about. In head-to-head match-ups with others, including former Vice President Al Gore and just about every senator and governor in her party, she "wins." Of course, even as she has re-positioned herself on a number of issues (not, of course, gun ownership), she hasn't had to duke it out at Candidate Nights and in League of Women Voters-sponsored debates. A lot can happen between now and December of 2007, when anyone seriously interested in the presidency will have to declare him- or herself, and by then, she may have decided not to bother. On the other side of the political hill, the most "buzz" is about Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Like Clinton, Rice has good name recognition, but unlike Clinton she has no previous elected office experience, and is unlikely to acquire any before 2007. The perception of her as a political entity will almost entirely rest on her current and previous appointed jobs, all in the foreign policy arena. But Rice, should she want to try for the presidency, will also start out as the "glamour" candidate in her party. The pickings are as slim for excitement within the Republican Party as they are on the Democratic side. In using the term "glamour" I don't mean to slight either woman with a sexist pejorative. I mean, instead, to indicate that these two women are the most likely to excite the media as well as core groups within their parties. There are plenty of differences between the two, so a face-off between them could bring a lot of excitement and drama to an election. Rice has spoken before about her belief in the value of the Second Amendment and the arming of "average" citizens, but a recent appearance on "Larry King Live" on CNN, brought the issue to the front of the media burners and circulated widely on the Internet. Rice grew up in Birmingham, AL, during the 1950s-60s, and
has first hand experience with the issue of an armed citizenry. Rice told King that if guns had had to be registered, she was certain those of her father and friends would have been confiscated, leaving hers, and other families defenseless. "We have to be very careful when we start abridging rights that the Founding Fathers thought very important," she told the interviewer. "The Second Amendment is as important as the First Amendment," Rice said, and, as one of this month's letter-writers, Margaret Todd, points out, "that's pretty unequivocal." Only time will tell which-if either or both-of these women will replace the dominate "he" in politics, but it's nice to be writing this so early in the process and find myself agreeing with one.
Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission. |
By
Peggy Tartaro,
