Occasionally I find myself flummoxed (and frankly a little bit hurt) that a prestigious place like, say, The New Yorker, has not, unprompted, asked me to accept a position as their chief writer. But then, almost as soon as these episodes strike, I realize that such a request would be really, really stupid of them and so I take a few deep breaths and regain my composure. Sadly, that sort of cool-headed reasoning might just be lost on David Broder:
Eight months ago, Mitt Romney and Bill Richardson squared off as heads of the Republican and Democratic governors associations, the rival campaign arms of the two parties in the midterm election fight over 36 governorships.
Today, Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, and Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, are running for the presidential nominations of their respective parties. But the governors they helped elect are nowhere to be found....
Today, Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, and Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, are running for the presidential nominations of their respective parties. But the governors they helped elect are nowhere to be found....
This is a stunning contrast to the situation eight years ago -- a year in advance of the 2000 election. Vice President Al Gore had collected a bunch of endorsements from Democrats even before Bill Bradley turned up as his challenger. And 24 Republican governors had pledged their support to Texas's George W. Bush in a power play that provided the opening momentum for his candidacy.
The rest of the article waxes bizarrely about why, in a just world, any of this might be the case. Why, when Gore got so many endorsements from state governors, can't Richardson or Romney catch a break from their actual colleagues? Let me be the first, then, to make the bold suggestion that, while there are surely many, many explanation for this reticence (earliness in the game, the wide-open candidate fields, etc.), the main reason is that Romney and Richardson are really, really mediocre candidates. Neither of them is, in fact, likely to win either the nomination or the general election. Contrast that with Al Gore, no political genius he, who was nonetheless the obvious favorite from day one of the primaries, and surely you can see that there's literally no basis for comparison between what's happening today and the 2000 campaign.
Also notice the fact that Broder points to Al Gore's endorsement total one year before the 2000 election as evidence that maybe something sort of funny is going on here. As it turns out, though, we're still a few months away from November, when it will be a year before the 2008 election.
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