Saturday, January 20, 2007

Sunday morning lineup – Mark Kilmer reports that Senator Sam Brownback will announce his candidacy on “The Week” tomorrow. Of course, all the chatter will be about Hillary which is sure to make pretender-to-the-throne Joe Biden furious.

Were Presidential campaigns always two years long? We just had an election and already there’s about twelve candidates forming Presidential exploratory committees. Mark me down as “concerned” about the Republicans’ chances to retain the White House in 2008: one political party rarely holds the White House for three terms in a row. The most recent example was George H. W. Bush which most regard as “Reagan’s third term.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, i seem to remember minutes after the 1998 elecitons that George W Bush's name was bandied about almost immediately. While he didn't officially annoucne until May of 1999, there was little question he was running for President. After the 2002 election, John Kerry was on Meet Tim Russert right after New Year's Day announcing he was running for President.

It has become the norm lately for Presidential races to start right after the previous midterm election ends, it has just gone to an extreme degree this year.

Anonymous said...

It's not new. Ronald Reagan was running hard for President in 1975. Hubert Humphrey was running in 1959. And so on and so forth.

If it seems unusual, it's because neither party's Presidential nomination is the property of an incumbent or his surrogate, the first time that's happened since 1952. So you have more people trying to make splashes.

Mostly it's because of the 24-hour media. Something repeated 75 times in a week hasn't really happened 75 times; it just feels that way.