CAMPAIGN | SPOTLIGHT
Running for president
sure seems to be a nasty business, and those who take the challenge
deserve a measure of respect -- or empathy. Candidates have their
backgrounds scrutinized, their families stressed and their lives
turned upside down, all for a $400,000-a-year job that you have to
apply for twice.
The application process can be brutal.
I've met retired Gen. Wesley Clark a few times and interviewed
him last year, and I got to know some of his Florida volunteers,
including a Miami teacher and a law student who stumped for Clark in
South Carolina. Clark struck me as a good man -- an intelligent guy
who served his country for 34 years, and led the effort to halt
brutal ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Yet he had his
character questioned in vague ad hominems from former superiors, was
ridiculed by the presidents' supporters and hounded out of uniform
and into a sweater to assuage some liberals' discomfort with the
military.
Clark jumped into the presidential meat grinder and he made
mistakes (including skipping the Iowa caucuses). A political novice,
he rose quickly, only to surrender his campaign last week.
Howard Dean, a five-term governor known as a socially moderate,
fiscal conservative, was paired with Osama bin Laden in a Democratic
attack ad, turned into a cartoon by the media and redefined as an
angry liberal. Never mind that according to exit polls from more
than a dozen primaries from Iowa to Virginia, Dean's ''anger''
appears to be contagious in that he caught it from the
electorate.
Joe Lieberman was booed by fellow Democrats and dissed by former
running mate Al Gore (which might have been a good thing -- just ask
Dean); Sen. Bob Graham faded, unable to outpoll George W. Bush in a
hypothetical match-up in his own home state; labor stalwart Dick
Gephardt's base left the Iowa dance with John Kerry.
As for Kerry, no sooner did he become the likely Democratic
nominee than the White House's self-appointed media outlet, Fox
News, began what one can only guess will be nine months of
relentless character assassination -- with pundit Sean Hannity
portraying the decorated Vietnam War hero as a Communist for sitting
three rows behind ''Hanoi Jane'' Fonda at an anti-war rally in 1970
-- two years before her infamous trip to Vietnam. (Pravda or Granma
couldn't do a better job).
It doesn't take much imagination to guess how far into the gutter
the presidential race will dip before it's all over.
Throw in the savaging of Sen. John McCain, including a whisper
campaign regarding his ''black daughter'' in 2000 and the
continuing, shameful treatment of former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland by
the likes of Ann Coulter, who in a recent Townhall.com column
derided his loss of three limbs in Vietnam, and you begin to wonder
why anyone would run for office at all.
Bush is no longer immune either. The media have climbed down from
their genial 2000 coverage and post-9/11 hero worship, aggressively
digging into his record in the Vietnam-era National Guard after
Democrats dropped the ''A'' bomb (for ``AWOL").
The harshness of the political process even seems to be affecting
normally heart-strung Democrats, who seem to be moving on from their
favorite candidates to their second, or third, choices, with
clinical dispatch.
Kerry may not move -- or even agree -- with the, but he'll do,
provided he can beat Bush. And if he implodes?
Cue John Edwards.
Joy-Ann Reid is an online news editor and freelance writer.
