Ross Douthat: Should Obama Run?
Iowa and New Hampshire are still 18 months away, but the 2008 presidential campaign has already entered its Cuomo hour -- the twilight period before a race when the press grows weary of the likely candidates and begins casting about for big names and dark horses. It's a moment when imaginations run wild: Conservative pundits confidently announce that only Rudy can beat Hillary; a glorified PowerPoint presentation is all it takes for Al Gore to be anointed savior of his party; and the fence-sitting politicians who want to run for president someday try to read the tea leaves and figure out if that someday should be now.
History suggests that the answer should be "yes" for almost all of them, potential frontrunners and long shots alike. If Rudy Giuliani ever wants to run, for instance, the case for him to do so in 2008 is practically airtight. The nomination is up for grabs and every rival has a weakness; the GOP will be looking for a white knight to replace a weakened president; and Mr. Giuliani's socially liberal record won't go away with time, whereas his personal appeal will fade as the memory of 9/11 diminishes. A similar calculus holds for Mr. Gore: If he wants to make another run, he's unlikely to have a better foil than Hillary Clinton or a media more likely to rally to his side.
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But consider a more difficult case -- Barack Obama, the Great Democratic Hope, who's currently pegged as a frontrunner for 2012, or perhaps 2016 or even 2020. Would it be presumptuous for Illinois's junior senator to run this time around, on the basis of charisma, a compelling personal story and just a few short years in Washington? Of course it would -- but it might also be the smartest thing he ever does.
Yes, Mr. Obama is young and untested; yes, there are older, better-qualified names in line ahead of him. But he's in the Senate, where presidential aspirations go to die, and his political stock may never be higher than it is right now, when liberal Democrats and centrists alike project their dreams upon him, undimmed by the disappointments and compromises of a long career. For the moment, he's part Clinton, part Roosevelt, part JFK and MLK; but in eight or 12 or 16 years, he might be John Kerry.
Would Mr. Obama win in 2008? Probably not -- though he's breaking records as a fund raiser, and sparking more enthusiasm from Democratic audiences than any of the other '08 hopefuls. As the New Republic's Ryan Lizza has pointed out, there will be no incumbents in 2008 to unseat, either in the primaries or the general election, whereas "if he waits until 2012, he will face the historically impossible task of unseating the incumbent president of his own party, or the historically difficult task of unseating the incumbent president of the opposition party." Meanwhile, 2016 and 2020 are eternities away. And as with John Edwards, a good showing in the primaries could make Mr. Obama the presumptive VP nominee -- while unlike Mr. Edwards, he'll have a Senate seat to fall back on if he loses.
The danger, of course, is that he might peak too soon -- the fate of Harold Stassen, for instance, who ran well in the 1948 GOP primaries and badly in eight presidential elections thereafter -- or else get laughed off the stage as an overly ambitious greenhorn. But in presidential politics, it's usually better to run too early than to wait, and wait, for a perfect moment that may not come. Losing the 1988 primaries at age 39 didn't hurt Al Gore's long-term prospects; it didn't hurt Ronald Reagan's future chances that he ran, and lost, against Gerald Ford in 1976; losing to George W. Bush in the 2000 primaries doesn't seem to have damaged John McCain's '08 hopes. Mr. Edwards was mocked as callow in 2004, but his VP slot on the Kerry ticket carried him to the doorstep of the White House. And sometimes you even shock the world and win -- as Bill Clinton did in 1992, like Jimmy Carter and JFK before....
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History suggests that the answer should be "yes" for almost all of them, potential frontrunners and long shots alike. If Rudy Giuliani ever wants to run, for instance, the case for him to do so in 2008 is practically airtight. The nomination is up for grabs and every rival has a weakness; the GOP will be looking for a white knight to replace a weakened president; and Mr. Giuliani's socially liberal record won't go away with time, whereas his personal appeal will fade as the memory of 9/11 diminishes. A similar calculus holds for Mr. Gore: If he wants to make another run, he's unlikely to have a better foil than Hillary Clinton or a media more likely to rally to his side.
* * *
But consider a more difficult case -- Barack Obama, the Great Democratic Hope, who's currently pegged as a frontrunner for 2012, or perhaps 2016 or even 2020. Would it be presumptuous for Illinois's junior senator to run this time around, on the basis of charisma, a compelling personal story and just a few short years in Washington? Of course it would -- but it might also be the smartest thing he ever does.
Yes, Mr. Obama is young and untested; yes, there are older, better-qualified names in line ahead of him. But he's in the Senate, where presidential aspirations go to die, and his political stock may never be higher than it is right now, when liberal Democrats and centrists alike project their dreams upon him, undimmed by the disappointments and compromises of a long career. For the moment, he's part Clinton, part Roosevelt, part JFK and MLK; but in eight or 12 or 16 years, he might be John Kerry.
Would Mr. Obama win in 2008? Probably not -- though he's breaking records as a fund raiser, and sparking more enthusiasm from Democratic audiences than any of the other '08 hopefuls. As the New Republic's Ryan Lizza has pointed out, there will be no incumbents in 2008 to unseat, either in the primaries or the general election, whereas "if he waits until 2012, he will face the historically impossible task of unseating the incumbent president of his own party, or the historically difficult task of unseating the incumbent president of the opposition party." Meanwhile, 2016 and 2020 are eternities away. And as with John Edwards, a good showing in the primaries could make Mr. Obama the presumptive VP nominee -- while unlike Mr. Edwards, he'll have a Senate seat to fall back on if he loses.
The danger, of course, is that he might peak too soon -- the fate of Harold Stassen, for instance, who ran well in the 1948 GOP primaries and badly in eight presidential elections thereafter -- or else get laughed off the stage as an overly ambitious greenhorn. But in presidential politics, it's usually better to run too early than to wait, and wait, for a perfect moment that may not come. Losing the 1988 primaries at age 39 didn't hurt Al Gore's long-term prospects; it didn't hurt Ronald Reagan's future chances that he ran, and lost, against Gerald Ford in 1976; losing to George W. Bush in the 2000 primaries doesn't seem to have damaged John McCain's '08 hopes. Mr. Edwards was mocked as callow in 2004, but his VP slot on the Kerry ticket carried him to the doorstep of the White House. And sometimes you even shock the world and win -- as Bill Clinton did in 1992, like Jimmy Carter and JFK before....