Stop the presses! Retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is not going to run for president in 2008! Stop them again! Retiring Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa is!
Thus is the truism of American politics confirmed again. When it comes to presidential aspirations, for every ambitious politician who stares reality in the face and blinks, there?s always another who doesn?t and presses on.
Even as the American voter is barely recovering from the bombast of this fall?s congressional and gubernatorial elections, the political spotlight is turning to the next presidential election two years hence. And for every faint-hearted Frist there are a dozen or more other pols with stars in their eyes gearing up for it.
Frist?s decision not to enter the starting gate for the 2008 Republican nomination was a triumph of common sense over ambition. His ineffective leadership of the Senate over the previous four years demonstrated his unpreparedness for higher office.
His threat to use the “nuclear option” of killing the Senate filibuster through a parliamentary maneuver to achieve confirmation of conservative judicial nominations, showed a disdain for the institution he headed. And this successful surgeon?s political opinion via video-viewing in the sad Terry Schiavo case belittled his professional stature.
As for Vilsack, his decision to plunge into the race for the Democraticnomination may be marked down as an excessive case of hubris for the two-term governor of a small state who has had no foreign-policy experience to speak of, in a time the presidency cries out for it.
But he is doing no more than following the successful road taken more than three decades ago when a retired one-term governor of Georgia named Jimmy Carter used the Iowa precinct caucuses as a launching pad for his startling trip to the Oval Office.
Carter all but set up camp in Iowa starting in 1975 and by sheer grit and grin wormed his way into the affection of enough caucus-attending Democrats on voting night in early 1976 to grab the national news media spotlight. And it never swung away from him until he reached the White House.
Vilsack, as a very popular Iowa governor with a clean record and a compelling personal saga as an orphan boy who overcame adversity, could follow suit. The last time an Iowan ran for the Democratic nomination, when Sen. Tom Harkin tried in 1992, his candidacy caused other hopefuls to bypass the state. As a result, its caucuses were rendered meaningless that year, and he got no credit for winning there.
But Vilsack is not likely to be seen as a similarly prohibitive favorite in his own state in 2008, and other Democratic hopefuls already have been working Iowa diligently. These include Sen. John Kerry, who won the caucuses in 2004, and former Sen. John Edwards, who was a surprising second and earlier this year led Vilsack in a Des Moines Register poll.
So if Vilsack is able to carry the caucuses in a highly competitive field likely also to include present Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton and a host of others taking their chances in Iowa, he could emulate Carter, for a time at least.
Along with all the other hopefuls in both parties, Vilsack is scheduled later this month to join the parade to New Hampshire, site of the first 2008 primary, where Carter built on his Iowa success with another victory and finally was taken seriously as a candidate.
But two years is a long time in presidential politics and in addition to the large shadow of the former first lady, a new Democratic star is emerging in freshman Sen. Barack Obama, who has a personal story of his own that is tantalizing the political handicappers.
If nothing else, Vilsack?s long-shot candidacy is yet another illustration of how the lure of the presidency can persuade a political figure off the national stage to see himself as a future commander in chief. After all, another governor with no foreign-policy experience named George W. Bush fulfilled that vision only six years ago.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
