Outside Counsel

I've been thinking about this field of candidates for the Republican nomination, trying to recall a time when there was such an undefined group. Mittens can't crack 25%, and the rest of the pack seems to rise and fall in two week cycles. Once a candidate crests they seem to pretty much fall back permanently, and although not a single vote has been cast, and although the dynamic will surely change once the voting starts, this state of affairs seems very unusual to me. As close as I've been able to come to a similar race is the Democratic Presidential primary season of 1988. Remember that one? Let me run it down for you, in order of finish:

Michael Dukakis
Jesse Jackson
Al Gore
Dick Gephardt
Paul M. Simon
Gary Hart
Bruce Babbitt

In addition, Lyndon LaRouche, David Duke, James Traficant, and Douglas Applegate were out there, and I suppose I shouldn't pretend that they were that much more marginal than Babbitt-- it's just that Babbitt was my early favorite. In hindsight the major candidates are an interesting list, aren't they? This was Gary Hart version 2.0, and he was the initial front-runner. After Babbitt dropped out I threw my support behind Jesse, thinking that an African-American President with a history of social activism would be the most likely to address the issues of social and economic injustice that I believed were the chief problems in American society. This, of course, proves that I have always been exactly the kind of rube that doubles down at three card monte, but I'm laying it out there in the spirit of full disclosure. I liked Paul Simon, too. This was the Illinois Paul Simon, the one with the big ears and the bow ties, not the guy who wrote "Feelin' Groovy". I wasn't a big Dick Gephardt fan-- his anti-trade posture impressed me as wrong-headed. This was Al Gore version 1.0-- Ed Koch endorsed him, but Gore was still evolving, and I found his stand on reproductive freedom unacceptable. Then and now that will always be a deal-breaker for me. I had problems with Tipper's anti-Rock and Roll beliefs as well.

The cat that ultimately rolled up the nomination was, of course, Dukakis, and he essentially did it by becoming everyone's second choice. Hart bailed early, Iowa went Gephardt, Simon, Dukakis, and New Hampshire went Dukakis, Gephardt, Simon. In the Super Tuesday races, Dukakis won six primaries, Gore five, Jackson five and Gephardt one, with Gore and Jackson splitting the southern states. The next week, Simon won Illinois. Essentially they followed form, with the southernerssplitting their support. That was basically it for Gephardt-- Jesse stayed in to the end, and so did Gore. Nobody ever used the words "Dukakis" and "juggernaut" in the same sentence: he was the beneficiary of timing, and maybe that's what will happen for Romney too. We aren't hearing much about New Hampshire, but that's Mittens' firewall, and he should be able to hang on past South Carolina. After than it becomes a question of who an acceptable second choice might be, and I am really not seeing one likely to emerge, although Newt might yet. I suppose the real difference between 1988 and 2012 is that Hart was sunk by a fling, and Newt will endure notwithstanding his personal life patriotism. The other difference is that all of the prospective Democrats were intelligent, serious people, and none of these Republicans can make that claim, but you run the campaign with the candidates you've got, not the candidates you wish you had.

Another possibility is that the front runner situation in 2011 is more volatile than it was in 1988, and that Mittens has been and will be everybody's second choice all along. This makes a certain kind of sense, and the Romney/Dukakis comparison is not inapt once we get past things like ideological consistency.