Anybody who's ever "played the ponies" knows about horses for courses. Smart betters always take into account the track the horses are running on before they place their bets. Today is November 15th, next years election is still eleven months-19 days away. But Americans will start picking candidates early in January (maybe in December). That's when Iowa and New Hampshire make their picks, shortly followed by the rest of the country. In all likelihood we'll have picked our candidates by late spring, well before we know what the issues are. It's pure folly.
I blame it on Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, and all the other ex-politicos who now pass themselves off as journalists. As politicos, their lives were one long series of elections. From the day their candidates were elected, their continued employment depended upon his reelection, so, it was natural for them to start running for office the day after the last election. Now the politico-journalists have infected all of us with that same itch. They've turned national elections into a spectator sport. They follow all the ups and downs of every candidate, and risk the fate of the republic on smirks, smears, and gotchas. It stinks.
When I worked at UPI we observed "Quadrennial Years"--Presidential campaigns, conventions, and elections were hot news, for only one year out of four. The nominee, unless he was an incumbent was not chosen until August, when the convention voted.
I first covered conventions in 1960 when the Democratic nomination was not settled until Dave Lawrence, the political boss of Pennsylvania, announced that he would cast his state's votes for JFK. As I recall it, he didn't do that until the second day of the convention. By then, roughly 90 days before the election, we all had a pretty good idea of what the issues were going to be. We knew the course over which the candidates would run.
At this moment, I can't be sure what the most important issues will be on November 4, 2008. My greatest concerns are, one, the economy; the price of oil, the National debt, the weakness of the dollar, the housing bust, and, two; the war; the over-extension of America's armies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential dissolution of Pakistan, the Iranian nuclear threat, and a fundamentalist takeover in Somalia. If these are the issues on November 4, I would not feel comfortable voting for any of the current contenders.
If the economy turns out to be the issue, I'd suggest that Republicans nominate John Thain, the President of the New York Stock Exchange. He was my choice Monday, well before Merrill Lynch chose him to be its new CEO, and I don't see any reason to change my mind now. I don't know Thain personally, but I do know what he's done at the Stock Exchange, where, in a moment of crisis he's managed to make a silk purse our of a sow's ear. He's intelligent, incorruptible, and his integrity is unquestioned. I know, from others, that he possesses impeccable conservative credentials; would be acceptable to all factions of the Republican Party, and to all Americans who think that integrity is the most important quality in a President.
The Democrats wouldn't go wrong if they countered with President Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin. Rubin delivered a budget surplus to all of us in his last year in office. That alone qualifies him for the Presidency, and his integrity is also universally acknowledged. It's about time we had a straight shooter in the top job.
If war is the top issue on your mind, and you're a Democrat, I'd suggest you consider Virginia Senator Jim Webb. Webb is an Annapolis graduate, who won the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts while leading a Marine rifle platoon in Vietnam. As a freshman Senator he's introduced a new GI Bill that would give veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts the same educational benefits that WWII veterans received. He's active in the support of stronger Congressional ethics rules, stem cell research, and, most importantly, rebuilding the military. He's also got a son serving in Iraq, and it's about time somebody in the White House had a personal stake in the war there.
To the GOP, I'd recommend Senator Chuck Hagel, another Vietnam Purple Heart winner. He was an ordinary infantryman in that war, and rose to the rank of Sergeant. He saw the war as a grunt, a point of view never available in the Bush administration. Wikipedia reports he was an early supporter of Ronald Regan, and served as deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration under him. He quit that job when his boss, the chief administrator, called veteran groups "greedy" and tried to cut VA funding. That is another reason to vote for Hagel now. Earlier this year, he had considered running for President, but gave up the race when he couldn't find enough financial support to get his campaign off the ground. It's our loss that he's no longer in the race, and I'd like to bring him back. He'd take good care of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq while they were there, and make sure the V.A. took good care of them when they got back home. He's always been his own man, and that's good reason for making him our man.
Given the issues we're facing, I think any of the four candidates I mentioned above, would make a better President than any one of the dozen in the race right now. Maybe if we had six or seven months to pick our man, we'd discover that there were better candidates available, and thereby we'd elect a better qualified President.
Thanks to the politico-journalists and the 24 hour news networks there's little chance of that in 2008.