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The Making (?) of the President, 2007

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- "Races in Flux in Iowa and New Hampshire," according to a front page headline in last Wednesday's New York Times. Here in Florida, and in a lot of other places I've traveled recently, the presidential race seems beyond flux, somewhere out there in another dimension known only to political bloggers and their ilk.

The Times story, focusing on a theme I've enjoyed hammering on myself, that Republicans and Democrats live now in separate universes, seems to me kind of an official acknowledgment that the campaign is over. The campaign of 2007, that is, even if only about half the nation even realized it was happening.

We now begin the presidential campaign of 2008. What happened in the past 12 months was surprisingly predictable: Campaign finance laws were shown to mean nothing, any candidates in either party with a chance can somehow get all the millions they need; name recognition counts for all in the early months of any campaign, a fact that means a lot if you're named "Clinton" or "Giuliani" or "McCain." The Democratic race was always likely to be between Sen. Hillary Clinton and a non-Clinton; the Republican Party is so discredited and discouraged that Giuliani and McCain could survive no matter how badly they did -- and they've done pretty badly.

Logic says then that things will stay about the same in 2008. I doubt that very much. The Times polls, done with CBS News, were showing what political field workers have known for a long time, that Republicans and Democrats are running in two totally separate elections in Iowa and New Hampshire. Republicans in the early (read 2007) states think the election is about national security (Iraq and Iran) and immigration (too many of the wrong kind of foreigners). Democrats think it is about Iraq (get out) and health care (get some).

But Times correspondents, doing the kind of interviews field workers have been doing for months, reported back that issues and principles may not be as important as polled and advertised. In both parties, loyalists are torn between candidates they agree with and candidates they think have a better chance of winning next November.

So a nice Democratic lady in New Hampshire who loves Barack Obama or John Edwards may vote for the Clinton (or Clintons) because she (they) is said to have a better chance of beating the Republicans. And a nice Republican lady in Iowa might think that nice-looking Mitt Romney is the second (or third) coming, but might vote for that screwball Giuliani because polls say he is the strongest Republican, whether he really is one or not.

In other words, this could be a brand-new ballgame, at least different than the one those interested in it (half the country) have been reading about lately. Readers, of course, like reporters, must always prepare themselves for "in a stunning upset ..." leads the day after elections -- a euphemism for, "We had it wrong all along."

Just in case we all wake up surprised those first few days in January -- many will be surprised the contests have been going on all through 2007 in Iowa and New Hampshire -- the Times conceded in the third paragraph of its long poll story: "The polls (were) suggesting that the outcome was far from settled in either place."

This has been an odd "election" year by any measure. Both campaign politics and journalism have been wildly out of "sync" with voters for a variety of inside-baseball reasons, most of them having to do with a mine-is-sooner-than-yours rush by states to hold their primary elections earlier than in the past to win more media attention -- and perhaps more influence in the final selection of the candidates in both parties. Campaign workers also spotted that first, when normally polite and generally savvy New Hampshire and Iowa voters began slamming screen doors in their faces and asking what they were doing walking up their driveways 18 months and more before the people actually choose a president.

Millions and millions of dollars and young-people hours have been expended with no guarantee that they have actually been connecting with the Americans who have the first say in 2008, not money-givers or storytellers, but actual American voters who happen to live in two small states a thousand miles apart. An "upset" could be both fun and educational for all involved.

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