Mark your calendars. There are only 18 months until the next presidential election, meaning we, the general electorate, can expect 18 months of debates, campaign commercials, speeches, glad handing and baby kissing – 18 months of watching the peripheral candidates drop like flies in a walk-in humidor, and 18 months of listening to the front-runners talk endlessly.
Each successive presidential electoral season seems to start earlier. This campaign season continues the trend. The Democrats and Republicans have already held their first debates, aired on MSNBC, at which the glutted field of candidates jockeyed for position.
The “debates” were more question-and-answer sessions than anything else; all public relations posturing, over-brimming with clipped political sound bites that severely lacked anything resembling substance.
It is still too early for substance, and the candidates know this.
Partially, this was a result of the massive number of candidates invited to each debate.
The Democratic debate featured Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, Mike Gravel, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich. If you don’t recognize many of those names, you’re not alone.
Most of these candidates don’t matter. Kucinich, the perpetual candidate, supported by the most vociferous figures in the antiwar movement, will not crack five percent. But in the debate, a more-or-less level playing field, he was capable of positioning himself suitably far enough from front-runner Clinton to justify his existence as an alternative.
The real dark-horse standout was Gravel, a former Alaska Congressman, who grumbled his way through the debate like someone’s drunken uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.
Gravel’s home state of Alaska is infamous for its strange, cantankerous politicians. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, to cite the most obvious example, is a Republican incumbent known primarily for his pork-barrel initiatives, including the Gravina Island Bridge (aka “The Bridge to Nowhere”), which cost $315 million. Even within the pork-laden halls of Congress, Stevens is known as the king of earmarks.
But Gravel is a different kind of politician, known primarily for his brisk and blunt dialogue: “These other candidates, they frighten me,” said Gravel, before promising that, as president, he would never go to war.
At least Gravel knew where he stood on issues. Clinton, on the other end of the spectrum, had the unnerving ability of being both shrill and centrist, with the verbal cadence of a saleswomen. Obama spoke poorly and sometimes appeared flustered, seeming far less charismatic than earlier characterized. Richardson proved that he may have a shot at sneaking past the front-runners, with his straight-talking New Mexico demeanor and professed love for individual liberties, including the always-controversial concept of gun ownership.
The rest of the candidates were infinitely forgettable, including Edwards, whose defining characteristic is his $400 haircut, which still looks like a hack job from Super Cuts.
The Republican debate featured 10 candidates: Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Ron Paul and Tommy Thompson.
Held at the Ronald Reagan Library, the entire debate seemed as if it were a half-hearted attempt to raise the elder Republican statesman from the dead – as if saying his name a number of times would resurrect his spirit, Beetlejuice-like. It is understandable, however: Reagan’s reign is viewed through the Republican National Committee’s rose-tinted political glasses as being the halcyon days of Republican rule; they have all but given up on George W. Bush.
The closest candidate to Reagan’s level of communicative savoir faire was Romney, who answered questions with a certain level of poise and exactitude, even when dancing around issues on which he had previously flip-flopped, including abortion, and despite looking like he was covered in a thin veneer of oil.
Giuliani performed admirably and defended his supposedly pro-life positions as well as could be expected, and he continues to be a realistic option for Republican centrists (Paul, another centrist with a decidedly libertarian political flavor, is not a viable Republican candidate).
The pro-war candidate was, without a doubt, John McCain, who stated that he would chase Osama bin Laden into Hell in order to capture him. Similarly, his rhetoric sounded ominously similar to Bush’s – speaking of terrorists as if there are a finite number of them.
It’s too early to determine who the frontrunners are. Eighteen months is an exceptionally long time in the world of politics, and anything could happen in that amount of time. The extended campaign season works against candidates, leaving more opportunities for a Dukakis-level political gaffe (his infamous tank-ride photo shoot) or a Howard Dean-style melt down (his Godzilla shriek heard around the world).
It is too early to tell who the standout candidates are from each party. In all likelihood, it will also be too early to tell five months from now, though, one hopes, there will be fewer candidates.
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