Looking at the Republican presidential field, you might be forgiven for thinking that none of the main contenders can be nominated.
Looking at the Republican presidential field, you might be forgiven for thinking that none of the main contenders can be nominated.
The presumed front-runner, John McCain, never a favorite of the Bush crowd, has lately emerged as more hawkish than Bush himself. But by primary season 2008, the war is likely to be even more unpopular, and most Republicans will be distancing themselves from the Iraq mess, not urging its escalation.
Rudy Giuliani did well after 9/11, and was an impressively well-liked Republican mayor in liberal New York. But Giuliani was popular as a steadfast social liberal, respectful of gay rights and abortion rights. Unlike former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Giuliani was far too forthright to start doing pirouettes now. It's hard to imagine the GOP base going along.
And speaking of Romney, the malleable Mitt has done so many reversals that makers of flip-flop commercials will have a field day. Romney is also on the defensive as a Mormon, since many fundamentalists don't consider Mormons Christians. Almost half a century after the civil rights revolution, this should not matter, but that's right-wing politics for you. Romney is having trouble getting out of first gear.
Of the also-rans, Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas fundamentalist, is unlikely to travel well. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has likewise failed to take off. And Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a traditional conservative, would make a good president; but he's too vocal a critic of Bush to be forgiven by loyalists.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is constitutionally disqualified as foreign-born. Jeb Bush might be plausible if his name were anything other than Bush. An oft-mentioned long shot, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has never run for office.
And it gets worse. The Bush administration has collapsed on so many fronts that Republican officeholders up for re-election will be torn between saving their own necks and remaining loyal to the hard-core base. Eight or nine Republican senate seats could be at risk.
But someone will win the GOP nomination -- only to face the strongest Democratic field in many decades. And here is an incautious prediction. The Democratic nominee is most likely to be Barack Obama.
I have followed politics far too long to fall in love, but I have to say that Barack Obama is like nothing we have seen since Bobby Kennedy and maybe since FDR. If you haven't read his first book, Dreams From My Father, you owe it to yourself.
Obama wrote the book when he was 33, having spent nearly three years as an organizer on Chicago's South Side, and then three years at Harvard Law School where he was elected president of the Law Review. From there he went to Kenya, to come to terms with the African side of his family.
Reading this work, you think: no 33-year-old has the right to such uncommon wisdom and humanity. The comparisons that come to mind are the young Martin Luther King, or Vaclav Havel, or maybe Jefferson.
If you think Obama is a pretty boy with a gift for rhetoric and not an effective politician in the most noble sense of the word, read the chapters about his small victories organizing in the desolate neighborhoods of the South Side, one pastor and one kitchen table at a time.
Never mind the picture of the Clinton machine against the innocent Obama -- Hilzilla vs. Obambi, as Maureen Dowd memorably framed it. Obama's mass appeal could well roll over Hillary's money.
Obama is the only rock star in the campaign. We are likely to see a tidal wave of Americans under 40 who have never seen such a leader. Obama is young, and the Republican field is nothing so much as old. And this is a generation casually accustomed to revering the likes of Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey.
Obama lacks the foreign policy experience of, oh, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. But read of his first trip to his ancestral Kenya and you'll feel quite comfortable that he has an unerring grasp of the complex world beyond these shores.
I could be wrong, of course. John Edwards, with his authentic populism, would also make a formidable nominee. Hillary Clinton, despite her flaws, has always done better than her detractors predict.
But consider: here we have the first serious African American presidential candidate, a person of stunning character and principle who could be the redemption of this country. And over here, the first serious female presidential candidate, a woman of real substance and expertise if she can just stop trimming. And over there, we have the most populist Democrat since Roosevelt.
With candidates of this caliber, the primary campaign will energize a resurgent Democratic base that will stay mobilized through the November election. Any of these three would also make a fine president, and not just because George W. Bush has so thoroughly lowered the bar.
It promises to be a revolutionary political year, and it's been a long time coming.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. A version of this column originally appeared in the Boston Globe.
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