The 2016 presidential campaign starts now.
Actually it started last night with the Iowa Caucuses. Because of print deadlines I don't know the results, which are printed elsewhere in this newspaper, but I can tell you that Hillary Clinton is still the front-runner on the Democratic side. The Republican side is still unsettled and may go all the way to the convention that way, though I'm beginning to believe Ted Cruz might be emerging as the GOP front-runner.
I don't much believe in Donald Trump, though it worries me that Trump may have begun to believe in himself. Count me as one of those who don't think he entered the race for any reason more noble than self-aggrandizement and brand-building. I wonder if he secretly finds the whole thing hilarious. Trump is trolling the country, and I think Americans are too smart and responsible to really fall for that. I think there are more people horrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency than are enjoying the joke at this point, but hey, I've been wrong before.
I was the one who, on national television, doubted Hillary would run for the Senate. (I thought she was too smart for that. I thought she'd look for other ways to serve her country. I thought she make make a good Supreme Court Justice. I guess that's still a down-the-line possibility.)
But the thing is, everybody who ventures guesses about these things turns out to be wrong occasionally. I remember lots of pundits pooh-poohing Bill Clinton's chances for making a good run in 1992. A lot of them thought he was what Martin O'Malley appears to be today. (Note to self: Do not write off O'Malley completely yet. Both Hillary and Bernie Sanders have the potential to either self-destruct or to be hit by a literal or figurative bus.) I thought Clinton was trying to set himself up for a run in 1996.
What strikes me about the national elections I remember--and I can go back to Lyndon Baines Johnson vs. Barry Goldwater in 1964--is that they often play out like the NCAA basketball tournament. These races often run true to "chalk"--that is to say, the generally accepted opinion--but it's hardly ever all chalk.
In 1964 Johnson was an incumbent president -- he'd assumed the job after the murder of JFK, who had been assassinated nearly a year before the election. LBJ benefited from a Republican political moratorium, which limited politicking until after the official beginning of the primary season. This, coupled with his campaign's ability to paint Goldwater as an extremist, led to a landslide for LBJ, who was largely seen as the candidate most likely to keep the war in Vietnam from escalating. (Ironically, even some Republicans thought Goldwater, whose positions would influence the modern conservative movement and leave him open to charges of liberalism in today's political climate, a dangerous crank. Still, he had his supporters, among them, allegedly, a 16-year-old Hillary Rodham.)
That didn't work out, and Johnson was consumed by the war during the 1968 campaign; he dropped out of the race following the New Hampshire primary after Bobby Kennedy entered the race. Though he was facing competition from fellow Democrats Eugene McCarthy -- a peacenik who might have been the Bernie Sanders of his day -- and Hubert Humphrey, RFK may have been the odds-on favorite to be the next U.S. president on the night he was murdered by Sirhan Sirhan.
A year out, there were a lot of questions about the "electability" of Richard Nixon, a guy who, in his "last press conference," had bitterly informed the media he wouldn't be available to be kicked around any more. His victory in 1968 represented one of the greatest comebacks in American political history. So no chalk there.
It was, however, straight chalk four years later when Nixon rolled over McGovern in 1972. Even as a high school freshman I could see that coming, but Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to win the presidency in 1976. Ronald Reagan was a solid front-runner for the GOP nomination in 1980, and he probably would have beaten Carter even without the Iranian hostage crisis. So chalk.
And Reagan's re-election in 1984 was a foregone conclusion--in retrospect, poor Walter Mondale seems like a sacrificial lamb. Michael Dukakis ran a poor race in 1988, but no one was terribly shocked when George H.W. Bush prevailed over mid-majors like Jack Kemp and Bob Dole to win the GOP nomination.
Clinton shocked the world in 1992 but was a foregone conclusion in 1996. There was the chad-hanging drama of George W. Bush's win over Al Gore in 2000, followed by his expected landslide over John Kerry in 2004 and the mind-blowing ascent of Obama in 2008.
And while plenty of Arkansans may have been astonished by Obama's re-election in 2012, they shouldn't have been. He was a popular enough incumbent and the economy was improving.
So, of the 13 presidential elections I can recall, eight of them turned out the way the conventional wisdom predicted they would. The other five were, to varying degrees, surprising. We can understand why incumbents usually get re-elected (though LBJ, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush didn't). In years when there's no incumbent, the race for the White House is obviously a lot more wide open.
I've written columns about my skepticism about the chances of Sanders or Trump reaching the White House, but the truth is, if we're talking horse race, I'd take the field against any candidate you want to put up. I think Clinton is probably the safest bet, but we're still a long way out, and I can foresee all sorts of scenarios. Brokered conventions, white knights, October revelations.
Like Joe Strummer said, "The future is unwritten."
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 02/02/2016