Potential Presidential Candidates for 2008

Campaign 2008 is already in full swing. Who are the players? Below we look at some potential candidates, some of whom are (semi-)announced and some of whom are playing hard to get.

When looking at 2008 presidential candidates, always keep two things in mind. First, every morning 100 U.S. senators look in the bathroom mirror and see a future president. Many run, but only two sitting senators have ever been elected president: Warren Harding (R-OH) in 1920 and Jack Kennedy (D-MA) in 1960. The reason is clear: senators have to vote thousands of times and opponents can always dredge up some vote to batter them over the head with. The problem is exacerbated by the intricacies of Senate procedures, where the key vote may be on the motion to table the motion to reconsider some proposal. Note to senators: Both Harding and Kennedy died after serving for only 2 1/2 years. Are you really sure you want the job?

Second, people who vote in Republican primaries are to the right of the Republican Party and way right of mainstream America and people who vote in Democratic primaries are the left of the Democratic Party and way left of mainstream America. As a consequence, candidates who might be able to win the general election are often disliked by primary voters as too centrist. Politicans respond by talking fairly extreme during primary season and then ignoring what they said in the Spring during the Fall. Count on it.

Also worth noting is that two years before the election, few people are tuned in and pollsters asking "Who would you like to win the Democratic Party nomination might as well be asking "Please name some Democrat." Ditto for the Republicans. In 2002, everyone was expecting Gore or Lieberman to be the Democratic nominee in 2004. Nobody saw the rise (and fall) of Howard Dean. Worse yet, in the Spring of 1991, Bill Clinton was in 11th place in the polls. Nobody took him seriously. As Harold Wilson famously remarked,: "In politics, a week is a long time."

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Democrats

Candidate

Notes

Hillary Clinton (D)

Hillary Clinton scares the daylights out of BOTH parties. The Democrats know that half the country hates her guts. Part of the hatred is due to her being an "uppity woman," part due to her being a calculating politician, and part due to her role in the health care debacle in Bill's first term. On the other hand, the Republicans know she can raise boatloads of money ($90 million through Sept. 30), more than they can, and they also know that her husband is without a doubt the best campaigner alive today. Another strike against her is that to win, the Democrats have to do better in the South or the interior West and a senator from the Northeast is a tough sell there. Still, with universal name recognition, a razor-sharp mind, and more cash than Uncle Scrooge, she's the person to beat.

Candidate

Notes

Barack Obama (D)

Barack Obama is doing well in the early states, but a young (46) black freshman senator with no foreign policy experience is an inviting target for the Republicans. Yes, Jack Kennedy was 43 in 1960, but he had already served in Congress for 14 years and was a highly decorated naval hero in WWII (but Lloyd Bentsen is dead so Obama need not fear him saying: Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy). Also instructive is what happened to Harold Ford, Jr., another charismatic young black Democrat, in the recent Tennessee senatorial election. The Republicans ran a now-infamous bimbo ad showing a sleazy blonde winking at Ford, and Ford suddenly tanked. On the other hand, Obama raised a surprisingly large amount of money ($80 million throug Sept. 30). Recent polls show him ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire. If he can win both, he won't be home free, but will be a force to contend with.

Candidate

Notes

John Edwards (D)

John Edwards has a lot going for him. He is well known, from the South, and knows how to run a national campaign. He is also an extraordinarily good speaker and has a consistent message: preventing the country from dividing into the haves and the have nots. For middle class people barely hanging on, his economic populism could have great appeal. The death of his 16-year son in an auto accident in 1996 and how he recovered from that trauma gives him some authenticity that other politicians lack. Earlier this year he had a big lead in Iowa, but that has faded. Still, Iowa polling is notoriously inaccurate and a win here might put him in contention.

Candidate

Notes

Bill Richardson (D)

To win the presidency, the Democrats have to do better in the South, the Lower Midwest, or the interior West. Furthermore, governors do a lot better than senators. Add to this the fact that Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in the country. Enter Bill Richardson stage left, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico, who previously served in Congress, was ambassador to the United Nations, and was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Energy. Richardson's mother is Mexican and he grew up in Mexico City, so he speaks fluent Spanish. He just won reelection with 68% of the vote, the largest gubernatorial win in the state's history. He is well-known in the region and a Richardson candidacy could potentially bring in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado, all of which have sizeable and growing Hispanic populations. On the down side, he is a boring speaker in two languages and does not seem to be going anywhere in the polls. He might make a good Veep candidate though.

Candidate

Notes

Chris Dodd (D)

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) has announced he is running for President. Beats me why. He doesn't have the machine Hillary does, the charisma Obama does, the national campaign experience Edwards does, or the appeal to Western and Latino voters Richardson does. Maybe he is running for Veep, but what does he bring to the ticket? Connecticut? With Dodd on the ticket, the Democrats will definitely win Connecticut. However, without Dodd, they will also definitely win Connecticut. I suppose it looks good on your resume: "Ran for President."

Candidate

Notes

Joe Biden (D)

What is about the U.S. Senate that makes all its members run for President, no matter how microscopic their chances? While Chris Dodd has not a prayer of winning, Joe Biden has even less. He ran for President in 1988, but was forced out of the race when it was discovered that he had plagiarized a speech from the British politician Neil Kinnock. Maybe this time he could try plagiarizing from a politician who speaks, say, Uyghur, since it will be less easily detected. To make things worse, the day he announced, Biden said Barack Obama was "articulate," which brought the entire punditry down on his head. Joe should forget this nonsense and just concentrate on being a good senator.

Candidate

Notes

Dennis Kucinich (D)

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), the boy wonder who was elected mayor of Cleveland at 31, is running for President again, as he did in 2004. He has no chance of getting the Democratic nomination, which in his case is liberating. Unlike the other candidates, who have to be respectful to everyone and all ideas, no matter how nutty, Kucinich just says what he thinks. He is an unabashed old-school liberal and has a very detailed program he is running on, including immediate removal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, a single-payer health system for all Americans, legalizing same-sex marriage, and more. His main problem is that with a real horse race this time between Hillary, Obama, and Edwards few Democrats are likely to make a protest vote for him when they actually have a real choice in influencing who the nominee is. Nevertheless, his campaign will put some ideas on the table, however unpopular they may be in some quarters now.

Candidate	Notes
Mike Gravel (D)	Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska, is running for President to the left of Dennis Kucinich. Gravel supports gay marriage, decriminalization of marijuana, federal financing of stem cell research, and similar positions that most candidates won't touch. However, unlike Kucinich, who has a small but loyal core of followers, Gravel is almost totally unknown outside Alaska.

Republicans

Candidate

Notes

Rudy Giuliani (R)

Rudy Giuliani scores well in national polls, but it is hard to imagine that he will get the Republican nomination, despite his excellent chances in the general election. His past is his problem. He married his second cousin, then 14 years later got an anullment when he discovered she was his cousin. While married to his next wife, he had various widely publicized affairs. Then he announced his divorce at a press conference--before telling his wife--and proceeded to make his girlfriend wife #3. He has long been pro-choice, pro-gay, and pro gun control, and as mayor of New York, appointed many Democrats as municipal judges. His longtime friend and business partner, Bernie Kerik, has been indicted, raising questions about Giuliani's judgement. Up until Thanksgiving, the Base didn't seem to have a candidate. Now they may have found one in Mike Huckabee and Rudy is dropping like a stone.

Candidate

Notes

Mike Huckabee (R)

Mike Huckabee, born in Hope, Arkansas, just finished his second elected term as governor of his native state. He is keenly aware that another Hope native who governed Arkansas went on to bigger and better things. Huckabee used to be so fat that he could barely walk up the steps to his office. His subsequent diagnosis of diabetes scared the daylights out of him and he lost over 100 pounds and wrote a book entitled "Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork. As governor he has focused on health issues. As an ordained Baptist minister from the South, he has a leg up on the competition, but as governor, he had to be pragmatic and is not the kind of firebrand many Republicans want. Still, given how out of sync the rest of the field is with the Base, Huckabee might just pull it off.

Candidate

Notes

John McCain (R)

John McCain came into this race as the clear front runner, but in a few short months all that has changed. All his strengths (decorated Vietnam war hero, long record of achievement in Congress, maverick streak) and all his weaknesses (his age, divorce, three bouts of malignant melanoma, refusal to kowtow to Jerry Falwell then suddenly kowtowing to Jerry Falwell) hardly mattered any more. Like no other candidate, he is Mr. Iraq. He has firmly attached himself to the war and the "surge." Furthermore, the Base hates him for his principled stands on tax cuts, campaign finance, and immigration. Nevertheless, don't count McCain out. As Charlie Cook put it, Rudy Giuliani has more baggage than a Samsonite warehouse, Mitt Romney has yet to hit 10% in the polls, Huckabee doesn't seem to be doing that well in New Hampshire, and Fred Thompson is a big disappointment. McCain might win under the slogan "None of the above."

Candidate

Notes

Mitt Romney (R)

Mitt Romney is the son of former Michigan governor and failed presidential candidate George Romney. Romney is pro business and moderately conservative. However, he has three major problems. First, he was a 1-term governor of Massachusetts, a state not known for launching the careers of conservative Republicans. Second, he is a Mormon, and unfortunately many evangelicals don't like Mormons on theological grounds. Third, when running for governor of Massachusetts, he took many liberal positions that are slowly leaking out. He has raised a lot of money, but his support seems to be moving to Huckabee in Iowa and possibly elsewhere.

Candidate

Notes

Fred Thompson (R)

Fred Thompson announced very late, but quickly jumped to second place in the polls then fell back. He has a certain amount of baggage (getting his girlfriend pregnant in high school, working as a lobbyist for cigarette companies and foreign governments, etc.) but that all seems insignificant to his lackluster style of campaigning. He doesn't seem to really want the job and that shows. People expect a presidential candidate to be ambitious and Thompson is not. On the positive side, if he gets wiped off the map quickly, he probably won't care.

Candidate

Notes

Ron Paul (R)

Ron Paul is a Texas congressman who is running for President as a Republican although he ran for President on the Libertarian ticket in 1988 and came in third with over 400,000 votes. He still has very libertarian views and routinely votes against almost all bills that raise taxes or increase government spending. His libertarian views often irk his Republican colleagues. For example, he is pro life, and is thus against capital punishment as well as abortion, the latter not entirely surprising since Paul is a gynecolegist who has delivered 4000 babies. He is also against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage saying it is none of the federal government's business who you marry. As a doctor, he supports the medical use of marijuana, again saying the federal government should not be telling doctors which drugs to prescribe. He has raised a huge amount of money from grass roots libertarian activists. He is a real phenomenon, but is the longest of longshots to win the nomination.

Candidate	Notes
Duncan Hunter (R)	To say that Duncan Hunter, the congressman from CA-52 just north of San Diego, is a long shot has to be the understatement of the year. For him to be nominated, would require half a dozen much more serious candidates to collapse. It ain't gonna happen.