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Believe it or not, presidential wannabes are at it already
It is a filthy day in Manchester, N.H. An icy rain whipped by a stiff and unforgiving wind gives a slick and shiny coat to the trees, the light poles, and the candidate for president. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina leaps over a man-eating puddle of slush on his way into the Merrimack Restaurant on Elm Street, almost slips, rights himself, and plunges inside to greet Courtney Henrich. In just 13 years, she will be eligible to vote.
"Hah, har you?" Edwards asks in a soft and pleasant Southern accent that is eerily reminiscent of Andy Griffith (who grew up just about 95 miles away from him in North Carolina's Piedmont), though Edwards is, in fact, far less well known than Andy or Opie or even Aunt Bee. Edwards goes on to ask this same question of Courtney's mother and grandmother and any other carbon-based life form that comes within his reach. This is known by political professionals as "retail politics," which really means "bothering people in restaurants." It is a staple of presidential campaigning, and in New Hampshire, politicians are about as easy to find in restaurants as maple syrup. What is unusual, however, is that Edwards is doing it incredibly early, in February 2002, two years before anybody in the Granite State will cast a primary vote. And he is not alone. Joe Lieberman is out on the trail and John Kerry and Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle and Chris Dodd and Howard Dean and Al Gore and Russ Feingold and Al Sharpton and what is going on here? Why are these guys enduring blank stares, hotel mattresses, and airline food all for the privilege, many would say, of getting their heads handed to them by George W. Bush in 2004?
Because they must. Because the lesson of 1992, the Year of the Skunked, is emblazoned forever in their memories: Leading up to that year, there was another Bush with stratospheric approval ratings in the White House and some of the Democrats who were planning to run against him got cold feet and let a political force named Bill Clinton run away with the nomination and the presidency. They have cursed their timidity ever since, and now everybody shares the same popular wisdom about 2004: You can run now or you can run last. Is this a sign of excessive ambition? Perhaps, but accusing presidential candidates of excessive ambition is like accusing ballerinas of spending too much time on their toes: It is what defines them.
Go with the flow. Nobody is yet officially running, but it is almost impossible to tell in the modern era exactly when a campaign begins, because campaigning is now endless. As Charles Jones puts it in The Permanent Campaign and Its Future: "Permanent campaigns lack convenient starts and stops. Candidates fit themselves into a continuous flow of very public events."
John Edwards is fitting himself into very public events from one end of the nation to the other. In order to run for president, he must raise millions of dollars, put together a staff, line up party activists, increase his name recognition (somewhere near that of Barney Fife would be good). But first and foremost he must remember never, ever to wear a live microphone into a bathroom.
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