| Candidates for
President, then and now. By Tom Kelly I remember being worried the day I heard that FDR had died. He had been President since I achieved consciousness, although I was actually born during the last unpleasant days of Herbert Hoover and the onset of the Great Depression. I spent early childhood and the beginnings of adolescence with the radio sounds of the Fireside Chats, newspaper and magazine images of the jaunty smile and reassuring words of Roosevelt as a backdrop for everyday life as the Depression ground on into the heady days of World War II. I was troubled on that Sunday, December 7, 1941, when as a lad of ten I heard the radio news about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I listened raptly and was reassured by the resolve with which President Roosevelt steeled the nation the following day with the nationally broadcast "Day of Infamy" war speech to Congress. Four years later, on April 12, 1945, at the more mature age of 14 I feared the nation, and somehow I personally as well, was in trouble without the familiar national father figure of Roosevelt--the only president I had ever known--in the background steadying things. And now there was Truman. Who's he? The invisible man, who as the wartime vice president had not been trusted with information about the Manhattan Project underway to build the atomic bomb. We had heard almost nothing of him, except from his earlier work as a U.S. Senator leading a committee investigating wartime profiteering and military waste--a plain Missouri farmer and store clerk that everyone thought was a hick at best, a corrupt machine politician at worst, who turned out to be a pretty solid citizen. I cast my first presidential votes after turning 21 for Dwight Eisenhower. Then John Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson. Richard Nixon. Gerald Ford. And could not decide to vote for either Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter, nor Walter Mondale. Bush I. Bill Clinton, twice. Al Gore. And with reservations, John Kerry. After a bipartisan youth and younger adulthood, I have become a Democrat. And now I am a troubled and apprehensive Democrat. At the moment when the Democratic party has reestablished a bare toe-hold majority in Congress, with aspirations to extend their margin and win the Presidency, the leadership appears lost at sea, fumbling for direction in attempting to capitalize on national unrest with leadership of the Other Party. On the campaign trail for the 2008 nominations, the Democrats are running against George Bush--who in case they haven't heard, is not on the ticket--while the Republicans, all of them, in a series of smartly choreographed "fair and balanced" tag-team debates, are running against Hillary Clinton, who the media and the money moguls are positioning as the "Inevitable Nominee." They may be right, and if so, What? For openers, while Hillary is beating the brains out, so to speak, of the other Dems in the primary state polls and in money gathering, she travels with heavy baggage, which is being skillfully exploited by the entire Republican establishment and the cadre of candidates seeking nomination. By the time she wins the nomination, having overcome the sniping of rival Barack Obama, she will also be pre-positioned by the months-long Republican primary campaigners who may differ on details of some policy positions, but who are in lock-step in teeing up the anti-Hillary game which will begin in earnest when the real campaign starts. Vast right-wing conspiracy? You ain't seen nothin' yet. Her candidacy will energize sharp-elbowed Republicans across the board . . . and many Democrats will abandon ship. Result? Well, what states will she carry that Al Gore or John Kerry did not? And suppose the Hillary Mobile blows a gasket enroute to the nomination. Obama? Republican road kill. John Edwards? C'mon. Am I not a Hillary fan? I thought you knew . . . this page endorsed Bill Richardson of New Mexico months, years, ago. Hope he makes it. Otherwise, let's all set our clocks for a Mitt Romney-Mike Huckabee coronation at the White House come January '09. (Did someone say Al Gore? Was that Jeb Bush I heard pounding on the back door? Then all bets are off ...) |