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Jewish World Review
Dec 19, 2007
10 Teves 5768
Hillary and Rudy are struggling to stay front-runners
By
Michael Goodwin
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A year ago, it was in the bag. Six months ago, dead certain. Six weeks ago, no problem. Now, it's hold your horses. Rudy vs. Hillary, the battle of titans, could be called off. The problem is a sudden lack of voter interest.
Storms named Obama and Huckabee are roiling the presidential campaign. Seemingly out of nowhere, i.e., middle America, these upstarts are upstaging the heavyweights. The rookie Illinois senator and the former Arkansas governor were supposed to be practice dummies for the marquee names.
Party poopers, that's what they are. We didn't want just any old Democrat vs. any old Republican. We wanted Mommy vs. Daddy, the Alpha Female vs. the Alpha Male.
The dream showdown still might happen, but the momentum is, for the first time, against it. Sinking in the early-state polls, Rudy and Hillary are locked in struggles for their political lives. With voting set to begin right after Christmas and new year's, time is growing short to change the dynamics. They could go down before they get a chance to go at each other.
Count me as surprised. I've been saying since November 2004, when George Bush was reelected, that 2008 would be about Rudy and Hillary. I told Hillary that during a 2006 interview, which provoked in her the mischievous smile her friends cite as evidence she is human. "Well, then," she said, slapping the table in front of her, "we'd finish what we started." Giuliani ripped a page from Yogi Berra to describe the showdown as "déjà vu all over again."
Both had in mind the 2000 Senate match that almost was. She was First Lady and he was the mayor of New York and they were in a dead heat when his marriage and health unraveled. She cruised to an easy victory against a second-tier candidate and he went on to divorce, cancer treatment and 9/11.
Which put them back on track for 2008. And that's the way it has been virtually all year — until now.
National polls still have them ahead, he slightly, she by double-digits, but there is no national primary, only difficult state-by-state battles. The bottom line is that neither can go 0-for-January and win the nomination. Each has to win something before the mega-primary of Feb. 5, when some 20 states go to the polls.
The problem is that both are suffering damage to the shaky foundations of their campaigns. She was inevitable, and he was a national hero. Now they have been wounded by the rough-and-tumble of retail politics.
She oozed entitlement — that the nomination was hers because her name was Clinton and she wanted it. She could be a defense hawk one day, a dove the next and nobody was supposed to cry foul. She should be allowed to duck tough issues to preserve flexibility for the general election.
But inevitability is not a rationale, and her whole approach shattered like glass when the first hits against her credibility landed during the Oct. 30 debate at Philadelphia. Everything since has been downhill for her while Obama is finding his groove, to where he has an even chance of taking the nomination.
Rudy, too, is suffering from blows he should have seen coming. Although he has done a good job of dealing with abortion, he was surprisingly unprepared for the first questions about his adulterous affair with Judith Nathan. Questions about his business clients are growing, and he doesn't seem ready for those, either, suggesting they are unfair.
That the tough issues surfaced just as Huckabee was catching fire is no coincidence. A mistake or a revelation only matters if there is someone to take advantage of it, and Huckabee's fresh appeal is yielding amazing gains. In Florida, the firewall state for Giuliani's strategy, the latest poll showed Huckabee erasing a 14-point Rudy lead in a week.
There is a theory among political cognoscenti that Hillary and Rudy will survive because they need each other. Because they are so perfectly matched, they are the best argument for nominating each other, the theory goes. Thus, when one rises, the other will, too.
That's a good theory, but somebody better tell the voters.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and the media consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Comment by clicking here.
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