The President holds steady at a 1-outta-3 approval rating.
Congress counts a faint 29% of respondents as fans. The War in Iraq
won’t end before the Bush administration packs its bags. And the
2008 race for the White House has offered little indication that
the unrelenting growth in spending, entitlements, and immigration
that we’ve all come to expect from terminal Government will end
anytime soon. Until this week, the big flash of excitement came
courtesy of Fred Thompson, who became the most noteworthy of the
GOP candidates by not officially running. In a premature campaign
clogged with choreography, Thompson’s improvisations — the
rewritten speech, the video beatdown of Michael Moore — offered,
at a minimum, entertainment for the jaded, and at most dangled the
hope of a primary season that wasn’t paint by number.
But one Fred Thompson does not an epochal election make. The
return of politicians who never really left (Giuliani, McCain) and
the arrival of politicians who seem to have been around forever
already (Romney) provokes a cry for the truly weird, the left-field
personae and the rending of rulebooks that would make an open
Presidential race all that it could be. The return, say, of Newt
Gingrich, from the pit of obscurity and alternate history novels
that had engulfed him for the past decade. Or the decision of
Michael Bloomberg to run a billion-dollar campaign financed
entirely out of pocket — as an independent.
Now we’re talking. Goaded into what would appear to be action by
the actor-senator absorbing the world’s supply of buzz, Newt drops
by ABC News to announce the “great possibility” that he’ll make a
decision at the end of September. Thrills! More popular than Rudy
himself, at least in New York City, Bloomberg leaks to the
Washington Times news of his own 800-pound gorillatude.
Chills! News reporting on the likelihood of breaking news is hotter
than ever. Is all the hubbub enough to actually cause something to
happen in the world outside the pressroom?
This correspondent’s bet is yes. When finally released from
those Hollywood obligations, Fred will make it official, and Newt’s
window of opportunity will open for a moment he will never see
again. No longer will Newt be the Lone Ditherer, the half-serious
has-been who overthinks everything to compensate for not thinking
anything through, the guy who’d rather know when he sits down for
Meet the Press that Speculation is Running Rampant than
know when he sits down for Meet the Press that he’s Actually
Running for President. With Fred in the race, Newt will be the guy
who turns Fred’s quirky one-off bid into a Second Wave — a
grassroots resurgence of lifeblood, manna from heaven for
Mainstream Conservatives. With Fred in, Newt will look less like a
copycat and more like a kingmaker. Rudy can handle the thought of
Fred making a quick splash. Rudy probably needs a couple martinis
to handle the thought of what Fred and Newt will do to his
poll numbers for many consecutive news cycles. Mitt — the man
everyone thought would be killed in the cradle by Fred on the first
day he jumped in — has shown his support can withstand the shock
of one big name with conservative bona fides. But two? It’s a fine
line between double digits and single digits, and the margin of
error is merciless.
So what if Newt’s public statements on Iraq and terrorism and
the third or fourth or whichever World War don’t quite meld into
something coherent? So what if Newt’s last high-profile venture
involved solving the Health Care Crisis together with — Hillary?
The Second Wave is not about prepackaged politics. Newt is not in
it to be the Republican Bill Richardson. He is in it to be the
vision guy, the extemporaneous speaker who doesn’t meander, the old
guru made new again because he’s like Karl Rove would be if Karl
Rove was a manly intellectual. He’s not just an architect, he’s a
futurologist. Don’t look back to those cover-page cartoons of Baby
Newt in a diaper, shutting down government ‘cause he can’t get his
way. Look forward, America!
IT’S NOT AN AWFUL IDEA, primarily because we appear unable to see
where we’re going, or at least unable to admit it. It seems
therefore both astounding and yet utterly sensible that the most
banal, efficient, wealthy, and heroically mediocre prefect of the
Imperial City wants to run the most corporate anti-establishment
Presidential campaign of all time — moving directly past the
primaries to Go, able to spend over twice the entire net worth of
Mitt Romney as the nominee of the Bloomberg Party.
Bloomberg’s window is even narrower, even more gleaming, than
Fred’s or Newt’s. The last time all of America’s sitting
politicians were so doomed and despised was 1968, and the ruthless
culling of popular heroes that struck that season — RFK, MLK,
Wallace, etc. — seems like part of the ancient history of a
foreign land. Many people would sooner vote, in the privacy of
their own home, for Johnny or even Hiram Walker if given the choice
between Rudy and Hillary or McCain and Edwards. If you like Obama
on social issues but worry that America Inc. is a failing business,
Bloomberg’s your man. There are just enough people sick enough of
both parties to make this pitch sound human.
It may all come down, as we’ve grown accustomed, to the
electoral map — the old reliable of the political adrenaline
junkie. If Bloomberg adopted a campaign strategy of hunting
exclusively for big game, he could carry the election with no
victories but New York, Florida, Texas, California and either one
of California’s state suburbs — Nevada and Arizona. And consider:
if the GOP lost both Nevada and Arizona to Bloomberg, but kept
Texas, the election would once again come down donkeys and
elephants in Ohio.
Don’t laugh. In a race featuring Fred and Newt and
Bloomberg on the side, the Republican Party is likely to be more,
not less, genuinely conservative, and the Democratic party more
liberal — and more big states than ever would seriously be in
play. The dread and ennui that gave Ross Perot one of four votes
after running the worst campaign in history are even stronger, now,
and Bloomberg, if anything, is no freak with a chicken leg pointer
and a penchant for visual aids. What’s so far been one of the most
yawn-inducing races in history could take a turn beyond anyone’s
control: a throwback to a bygone era when we didn’t play politics
half the way that politics played us.
