Nothing better illustrates the desperation of conservatives, and the Republican variety particularly, for a political magician to pull their chestnuts from the fire than the latest outbreak of possible new presidential candidacies.
With a full crop of hopefuls already on display in those televised chaotic cattle shows, of which there was another last [Tuesday] night in South Carolina, the names of three more entrants are being bruited about.
Former Tennessee senator and current television actor Fred Thompson has already been showing a lot of leg at party dinners. He is relying essentially on his “presidential” looks and a right-wing voting record of unsurprising and uninspired dependability, plus some big home-state money prospectors.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who earlier said he was waiting to see whether any of the announced Republicans raised the key issues, told ABC News? “Good Morning America” on Monday it was “a great possibility” that he would join the pack.
And friends of wealthy New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, according to the Washington Times, are saying that the Democrat-turned-Republican is ready to plunk down a billion dollars to make an independent run for the presidency.
Gingrich?s credentials as a conservative can?t be challenged, in light of his authorship of the 1994 “Contract With America” that helped gain GOP control of the House but fizzled in implementation, as did Gingrich himself as an ethics-deprived pol.
As for Bloomberg, he hardly qualifies as a conservative. A former Democrat, he ran for mayor as a Republican to stand out in the Big Apple?s muddled political environment. With that other New Yorker who occupied the mayor?s chair, Rudy Giuliani, facing troubles in the party for his support of gun control and abortion rights, Bloomberg is wise if he looks to the independent route.
All this activity and scuttlebutt reflects the growing view within the GOP that lame-duck President Bush has made such a mess of the current six-year Republican administration, at home and abroad, that only some larger-than-life figure of Ronald Reagan proportions will be able to bail the party out.
So far, none of the declared candidates nor any of the new characters flirting with running fills the bill as the next Great Communicator. And although all of them have been going easy in criticizing the beleaguered Bush, none has been in any rush to embrace wholeheartedly any aspect of his record, domestic or foreign.
They are all locked in for the time being on support of his war, at least as long as his troop surge and dependence on Gen. David Petraeus as a miracle worker in Iraq continues. But that support is riddled with acknowledgment, particularly by Sen. John McCain, that the war has been horribly mishandled–a concession to many Republican primary voters who agree.
It has been duly noted that Vice President Dick Cheney?s decision not to seek the presidency will mark the first time in 56 years ? in 14 presidential elections ? that neither a president nor a vice president will be on either party?s ticket. That fact frees the eventual Republican nominee of any compunction to run on Bush?s record, which is just as well under the circumstances.
But neither can that nominee call on the retiring incumbent as a crutch as, for example, Vice President George H.W. Bush was able to do in winning the presidency in 1988. In riding to a considerable degree on the Reagan record–as a sort of third Reagan term without Reagan ? Bush was elected in the absence of a particularly impressive vice presidency.
The junior Bush remains, as he was at a major party gala here last week, a prolific fund-raiser. But in terms of a legacy on which any of the horde of declared and prospective Republican candidates can effectively campaign, he is leaving them very little.
So being a GOP presidential candidate in this election cycle, or even thinking of it, has the makings of a distinctly uphill climb for all of them, slogging through an early-starting and long marathon well before the first state caucuses and primaries in January.
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.
