Voters looking in different directions in presidential race
Like the Roman god Janus, from which this godforsaken month takes its name, the two parties' voters in two states have looked in different directions.
These states perhaps started a marathon between two formidable Democratic candidates with ardent constituencies. Meanwhile, Republicans illustrating this year's asymmetry may be contemplating a choice among John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.
If McCain, who in 2000 won Michigan after winning New Hampshire, takes it again next Tuesday, Romney will be, in e.e. cummings' words, "a recent footprint in the sand of was." None of the four GOP candidates is close to enkindling a substantial plurality of their party comparable to that of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
The wrong question about Obama has been "Where's the beef?" -- "beef" meaning policy substance. Policy papers can be ginned up by campaign advisers. The right question is whether he is a souffle -- pretty and pleasing, but mostly air and apt to collapse if jostled. Presidential politics is an exhausting, hard, occasionally even cruel vetting process and now that he has been bumped hard we shall see if there is steel beneath the sleek gray suit.
Regarding Clinton, Iowa Democrats seemed to experience a great flinch, contemplating, then recoiling from, the prospect of a Clinton restoration. New Hampshire Democrats, however, demonstrated her candidacy might not be so brittle after all. But Iowa might have been a harbinger of flinches to come, especially if her husband continues to behave as he perhaps cannot help but behave.
Bill Clinton has transformed his wife's campaign into his narcissism tour. As The New York Times dryly described a New Hampshire appearance: "He talked about his administration, his foundation work and some about his wife."
She, the afterthought, arrived in New Hampshire spoiling for a fight but missing the point. She said Obama has changed some positions. But people inebriated by "hope" for "change" are not concerned about ideological differences that can be measured by micrometers. Voters are attracted to him as iron filings are to a magnet. Mind hardly enters into this response to his nimbus of novelty, and it is impossible to reason people out of affiliations they have not been reasoned into.
The Clintons' decision to cast the election as a bridge back to the 1990s -- to themselves (and another bridge to nowhere) -- has her campaign stressing that by the time her husband won his first 1992 contest, he had lost six. Jay Cost, a University of Chicago doctoral candidate, notes that Clinton did indeed lose seven of the first nine contests, but he lost to four different competitors: Tom Harkin, Bob Kerrey, Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown. That limp down memory lane shows how much time has flown since the Clintons were fresh. Iowa's results created what Sen. Clinton had hoped to delay -- her against one rival. Now she, like Obama, must show her steel.
Republicans must show staying power. Huckabee -- Where is Pakistan? Who is Darwin? Why is Wall Street so icky to Main Street? -- might be a fluke of the schedule that put Iowa, planted thick with evangelicals, first. He won just 14 percent of Iowa's nonevangelicals, among whom he finished fourth. Where would McCain be if the schedule had not offered him an early chance to romance New Hampshire again? Giuliani, supposedly strong in the Northeast, spent $3 million on advertising without elevating his New Hampshire numbers. But he waits down the road, where 97.2 percent of the convention delegates remain unallocated.
A marathon would reveal almost everything relevant about the candidates. If, afterward, either party suffers buyers' remorse, the buyers will have no one to blame.
© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group