August 13, 2007
Pithiest campaign commentary ...
Comes from Jim Geraghty, over at National Review's Campaign Spot.
Tonight, Tommy Thompson pulled the plug on his presidential campaign.
When asked how they were taking the news, both of his supporters said they were disappointed.
Thompson gave us the most idiotic moment in last week's debate. At the end, each candidate was given a free-form question to talk about something transformative in his life. He started babbling about all the women in his life who had breast cancer -- and it was a tragically long list.
Then Thompson stared into the camera with that befuddled expression and gravely announced that if elected he'd cure breast cancer by the end of the Thompson Administration.
Huh?
Wrong -- and weird -- on so many levels. Politicians pandering on a disfiguring, potentially fatal illness is distasteful; personally guaranteeing a cure takes it to a new high (or low).
Why this illness? Why not testicular cancer? No joke -- a friend's brother was dead within months of being diagnosed. It's a fast-moving killer, but not a particularly media-friendly disease.
Why not eliminate heart disease, which kills more people each year than all cancers combined?
If a candidate really wanted to make a difference, tell the audience to get off their fat asses, put down the chalupas and start exercising; obesity is a completely curable condition adversely affecting millions of Americans and the cure is already known: You can pack it in faster through your piehole than you can get rid of it on the other end.
But we all know that Thompson figured he'd snag the women's vote with his breast cancer ploy -- a more effective strategy than telling the voters they're fat and lazy.
Over at Power Line, Paul Mirengoff discusses why Thompson -- a partner at his lawfirm -- never seemed to gain traction with the voters.
Thompson said, "I felt my record as Governor of Wisconsin and Secretary of Health and Human Services gave me the experience I needed to serve as President, but I respect the decision of the voters."
Thompson is correct about what he brought to the table. He was a hugely popular governor with a strong record of innovation. His work as HHS Secretary was also widely respected. If credentials and track record were the key to running for president, Thompson certainly would have been a first tier candidate, just as Orrin Hatch would have been in 2000. On the Democratic side, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd would be leading contenders this cycle. Barack Obama and John Edwards would be blips.
Why can't candidates like Thompson, Hatch, Richardson, Biden, and Dodd get traction in the modern era? The three factors that occur to me are (1) television, (2) the vastly diminished influence of party leaders in the selection process, and (3) the discounting of, and indeed near-contempt for, experience gained in Washington.
The problem with the de facto disqualification of uncharismatic contenders and the bias against Washington experience is not that the process fails to produce nominees with good credentials and track records. For the most, it does produce such candidates, and likely will do so again this year. The problem is that it effectively reduces the number of high caliber contenders for the nomination, and thus increases the likelihood that the well credentialed contender who obtains the nomination will be flawed in other respects.
With all due respect to Mirengoff, his analysis seems suspect when he includes Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and Orrin Hatch as examples of well-qualified candidates. They exemplify the very essence of Washington insiders, backslappers, two-faced dissemblers -- in Hatch's case, far too interested in maintaining the gentlemen's club atmosphere of the Senate to notice that the Democrats have been fighting a bare-knuckles political street fight for years, comity be damned.
That the party base rejects men like this for the nomination is a good thing; that we end up with nominees like Dole and Kerry is not.
The field begins to shrink; who will be the next to leave the stage? My money's on Brownback and Tancredo.
Posted by Mike Lief at August 13, 2007 07:48 AM
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