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Mon. Jan 29, 2007

Stop With The Wishful Thinking, It Just Encourages Them

Today I heard about a poll: “In the first poll conducted for Newsweek since the State of the Union last Tuesday, 58 percent of respondents said ‘they wish the Bush presidency was simply over.’“

I can empathize with that. There are quite a few issues where I hope that the President will find a way to just sit on his hands until January, 2009. It’s a vain and useless hope, but there it is nonetheless.

However, we have to deal with our present reality. Because otherwise this wishful thinking merely encourages those who feel the President who takes office in January, 2009, should be campaigning right here right now in January, 2007. The very same month that election winners from 2006 took the oath of office. And that’s as wrong as Christmas trees on sale on July 5th.

Entirely unhelpful in this regard is the current suggestion that California and possibly three other largish states move their primaries up to the first week of February, 2008. It opens the possibility that someone in both parties could be the all-but-official nominee by Valentine’s Day, 2008. Heck, maybe we can hold election day by Easter, 2008.

Because then this early rush and hub-bub might make some particle of sense. Now we hear the Conventional Wisdom that anyone who doesn’t have $30-40 million in their coffers and a staff on the ground running right now is already too late. The race is already set. The money and talent have already been sucked up by all these Early Announcers. Hell, when Kerry announced he’d decided not to run, his staff got snapped up like the last rolls of wrapping paper on Christmas Eve.

Does anyone remember RFK?

Different times, I know. But it appears to me that there are at least four Big Fat Targets who will attract all the mud and other brown substances slung over the next 12 months. And by the beginning of next year, at least a couple of those four are likely to be smeared beyond all recognition. Beyond electability.

It could be that the wise one this time around is the one who lets The Big Four emit all their hot air and absorb all the heavy blows before this “wise one” joins the race. They’ll sure get my automatic consideration, just for sparing us an extra year of this hoo-hah.