Blame the Media, Conservative Dissident Version

Conor Friedersdorf does conservatives a great service by keeping his eye on the conservative partisan media. But I'm not at all convinced that they're the ones who did in Jon Huntsman, as Friedersdorf would have it.

Here's the question, and it's one for which we don't really know the answer: to what extent does the conservative partisan media -- Rush Limbaugh, Fox News in general and their various hosts in particular, the other conservative talk radio hosts, and conservative web sites -- function independently of the rest of the Republican Party? Keeping in mind that when I say "Republican Party" I mean the expanded party -- both formal party organizations and the larger party network, which includes party-aligned groups and individuals.

I don't think we know the answer overall. But when it comes to Jon Huntsman, it's pretty clear to me at least that Fox News and the rest of them were perfectly in accord with the rest of the party. After all, Huntsman exits the campaign after earning practically no high-visibility endorsements from party actors (I think he managed a few minor ones in New Hampshire, but that's about it). Nor do I expect that he raised a lot of money from the party network. Of course, it's sometimes very difficult to figure out who is influencing who in these things, but in this particular case I don't think it's hard at all: Republicans just weren't interested in what Huntsman was selling. And while Friedersdorf's larger point is that the Republican partisan press influenced the entire environment that candidates must compete within, again I just don't buy the idea that Huntsman, 2012, could have been a major factor in any plausible GOP environment.

Again, however, I think that we just don't know enough about how independent the partisan press is, either individually or as a whole. There's certainly plenty of data being generated during this election cycle; with any luck, we'll know a whole lot more once the people who study this sort of thing report back in a while.

Huntsman Out

Jon Huntsman is out, and endorsing Mitt Romney. There's no real effect on the race here, because this is a thoroughly expected development; the weird thing would have been if Huntsman had tried to continue on after getting 5% or less in South Carolina.

I'd made the point before that Huntsman reminded me of Bruce Babbitt 1988 -- both were loved by the press, respected but not supported by party actors, and ignored by voters. Both attempted the Big Campaign Strategy of being funny in debates, despite neither actually displaying any actual comic ability at all. But Huntsman also reminds me of someone like Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, Arlen Specter, or Paul Laxalt, people who seemed to sort of have the right qualifications on paper but in fact were just totally out of their league as presidential candidates, at least the way they were going about doing it. More than one person has speculated that Huntsman's campaign was more than anything a consultant-driven enterprise, and while it's always hard to tell from the outside, that fits perfectly with everything I've seen. But it also fits the profile of a politician who has always succeeded at lower levels and just completely misunderstood the gap between a statewide election in Utah and a national campaign.

At any rate, you don't get a party's nomination by deliberately annoying most of the party's groups.

My other comment here is that I'm kicking myself for not rewriting and updating the post I wrote about how just because Rick Perry said on the day after Iowa that he was staying in through South Carolina didn't necessarily mean that he was really going to stay in through Iowa. As it happened, Perry did stick around (at least so far), but similar claims by Huntsman immediately after New Hampshire turned out to be phony. Not that there's anything wrong with them doing so, but it's only natural that candidates will claim that they're in it for good right up until the point that they fold, and so observers should give very minimal value to any such claim.

Could Huntsman Have...?

I agree with Ezra Klein's characterization of Jon Huntsman's campaign: "Huntsman has offered the Republican Party a generic conservative platform minus the partisan swagger." And I agree that with Mitt Romney already monopolizing that space within the GOP field, Huntsman's bid was pretty pointless.

But really: what were Huntsman's options? Klein posits (and Andrew Sullivan agrees) that Huntsman's campaign would have been less pointless had he actually taken some policy positions to match his attitudes -- say, supporting the climate platform that John McCain ran on just three years ago. And, yes, there certainly was room for a real moderate conservative dissent candidate within the Republican party. But that's not a campaign for the presidency; that's a campaign to change the party. It's hard to undertake that sort of thing (as a presidential campaign) unless you really are a true believer, which Huntsman perhaps just isn't. The other thing is that while Klein may be right that a dissent candidate might poll better than what Huntsman's doing now, the ceiling would have been low: he would have at best had a Ron Paul type of campaign, with a solid 5-15% and no chance for more, although with some chance of changing the party going forward.

Not that Huntsman has any realistic chance as is. And, really, he almost certainly never had a chance after he accepted the job from Barack Obama. But at least Romney-lite has the plausible-sounding scenario that if something was to happen to the Mittster, perhaps Huntsman could inherit (plausible-sounding, but probably not realistic; Romney does appear to be running about as good of a Romney-like campaign as possible, with opposition just about as weak as possible, and even so he's having quite the hard time consolidating very much support). If he was out there pushing actual policy positions that would draw vetoes from important party groups, he wouldn't have even that.

All of which means that Huntsman basically should not have run for president in this cycle. But if he really wants to be president, then I can't blame him for running the kind of campaign he's running. The real problem is that while presumably there are a fair number of non-crazy conservatives who believe all sorts of non-crazy things and would very much like a non-crazy conservative party to stand for those non-crazy policies, there doesn't seem to be very much of an incentive for anyone to act on it. True believers, again, might do it anyway, but it's pretty rare for something that depends on true believers to actually work out.

Hey, Jon Huntsman! Want an Issue?

Jon Huntsman raised one of my favorite issues during the Tuesday debate:

HUNTSMAN: But let's be real about what it takes to get into federal government service these days. Who on Earth from the private sector is ever going to want to give up their privacy and enter government service with the background checks, the financial disclosures, and everything else that serve as tremendous disincentives for good people to get into government?
So what we have today, Charlie, we've got a professional governing class of people on one end and then you've got private- sector people on the other.
ROSE: And so what would you do about that to change that, to attract those kind of people so that they would be willing to serve a cross-section of people from every gender...
HUNTSMAN: Let's get back to what we did a generation or two ago, when we were more open in terms of accommodating people from all backgrounds who wanted to take a little bit of their life and serve in government, and then leave, and go back to what it is they did best, whether on the farm, or whether insurance, or whether business, or whether academia.

Great topic! But a little vague on how we get there.

Fortunately, I have a ready-made program for any candidate who wants to take this problem seriously. There are two parts: massively reduced vetting on the presidential end, and then requiring only a simple majority for confirmation in the Senate.

As I've proposed, the way to get there (at least on the White House side) is to set up a commission designed to recommend some sort of minimal vetting, along with some sort of at least slightly saner conflict-of-interest rules. Note that while some are barred by actual rules (such as Obama's rules against lobbyists), the real problem, as Huntsman -- who has been through a confirmation, so he knows what he's talking about -- says is what happens to the people who fit in those rules. First there's the incredible intrusive vetting system; next, there's the increasingly long wait between when people are first offered the job and when they can start work; and, third, there's a very real possibility that the Senate won't confirm, even in cases where the nomination isn't at all controversial.

Would the Senate consider switching (back) to a simply majority system for nominations? I think it's possible; Senate reform is coming, and it's actually in the Senate's interest to be able to process nominations far more efficiently than they do now. If they retained the ability of single Senators and small groups to still place holds, as I think they should, it might be enough to get them to go along. If not, I'd like to see the president implement as much of his as he can anyway.

I have no idea what Jon Huntsman thinks he's doing as a presidential candidate, but he's obviously not going to win and, as far as I can tell, he's not in the running for a Fox News show, either. Maybe he'll consider taking this up as an issue over the remaining few weeks of his campaign. Hey, it could even be a very mild net plus; after all, it should appeal to both his natural constituency in this campaign (Washingtonians) and, if he pitches it as he did in the debate, to Tea Partiers who can be convinced that Evil Washington Rules are preventing farmers from serving as cabinet secretaries. Go for it, Ambassador!

It's Easy To Believe You Can Win

I'm not sure how Matt Bai reconciles a realization that Jon Huntsman "will surely not attract a lot of evangelical followers" and is also "intolerable" to Tea Partiers with a belief that Huntsman has a chance to be nominated, but I absolutely agree with his answer to the question of whether Huntsman is really running for 2016:

This is, in fact, a very popular theory of Mr. Huntsman’s motives, and I address it in the piece. But I have to tell you that, in my experience, it’s just not in the nature of most serious politicians to run for any office — including the presidency — expecting to lose. I don’t doubt that 2016 is in the back of Mr. Huntsman’s mind, but I’m pretty sure this campaign isn’t some clever ploy to set himself up for later. He has convinced himself he can win now.

Look, I don't think Huntsman has a chance. But you know who does? New York Times reporter Matt Bai! That's pretty good! Not just him; Intrade ranks him as the 4th most likely nominee (if you interpret it that way). There are others, too. Who do you think Huntsman's strongest supporters are going to believe: the doubters, or the believers? So they're going to clip every "Huntsman's a serious contender" story they see, and you can bet he's going to see every one of those.

And that's the way it is for every candidate: there's someone out there, with some sort of reasonable credentials, who is optimistic about his or her chances. Nate Silver says that Herman Cain can win. Jonathan Chait thinks that Michele Bachmann can win. You can even find people who said that Newt Gingrich could win. I won't embarrass anyone by linking to a "Take Trump Seriously" piece, but, you know, they were out there. For what it's worth, I said that Jim DeMint and Haley Barbour had plausible chances of winning.

Meanwhile, there are lots of pieces out there too about why each of the candidates has no chance to win -- and again, I'm sure Huntsman's supporters are clipping all the arguments for why Romney can't win, and Palenty is going nowhere, and Bachmann has no chance. He sees those; he may or may not see the ones about how they might win after all.

And that's even before you get into the ego of the whole thing. What politician doesn't look around at the other candidates and just know that he or she at the very least belongs in the group?

Now, it's also possible that Huntsman, or other candidates, also think of future benefits as part of the plus side of running now. But I fully agree with Bai on this one: the odds are very good that he believes he can win.

Hunstman, and Three Questions about the GOP Process

I've written the "Hunstman can't win" post so many times...I think on the day of his big announcement, I'll just quote a wonderful Alex Massie post. Will Republicans settle for Huntsman?

That's a tricky proposition given that Huntsman was happy to serve in the Obama administration. It's also a problem given his minimal name recognition, the fact he comes from a small state and that, yup, there's already a Mormon ex-governor in the race. Oh, and it's not obvious he believes the same things as the voters who will decide this race do. Apart from that, I like his chances fine.

Oh, and also:

At present it seems that Huntsman's support is largely confined to Wall Street and McLean, Virginia. These are important constituencies but making David Brooks swoon is an insufficient condition for winning the Republican nomination.

Wonderful.

Meanwhile, we're finally getting close to the end of the announcement season, right? And the field seems basically set now, with the two big question marks being Rick Perry (probably in, I'd guess) and Sarah Palin (I have no guess at all).

Three timing questions to ask; I don't have answers to any of them. These are about three of the five people I believe are plausible GOP nominees, along with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.

1. How long could Jeb Bush wait and still get in and have a plausible chance of winning? My guess: not very much longer (note: I've never thought he would run. Just saying that if he did, he'd be a solid contender).

2. How long does Sarah Palin have to start turning her reputation around, which she would need to do to win the nomination? I think she still technically could do it. Of course, she probably won't; she seems determined not to. But my guess is that even as late as the fall, she could emerge as a pretty serious candidate for the nomination, if she was able to change the way she operates.

3. How long does Tim Pawlenty have to demonstrate a pulse with voters? My guess? November, December, something like that. Especially if Perry drops out, but even with Perry in the race I still think that if Pawlenty has a late rally to finish third in Iowa, he'd still have a chance. In the meantime, however, he has to grind out some gains in endorsements and fundraising, but if he does that I don't think he has to start moving in the polls until very late in the game.

Catch of the Day

Want to know why the press overrates Jon Hunstman's chances? Greg Marx makes the case that Huntsman is using a modified version of John McCain's press strategy, and it's working -- reporters are easy marks for a candidate who openly mocks the political process. Or, as Marx puts it, "wry self-reflection and apparent candor about the act of running for president, qualities that helpfully echo journalists’ own preoccupations." Marx also notes that Team Huntsman includes John McCain's old campaign guy John Weaver. The result? "[T]he ironic detachment from events, the understanding of a reporter’s need to write about the campaign as spectacle, the willingness to join the interviewer in knowing inside-baseball talk." And a lot of reporters who want to hang out with the candidate and say nice things about him.

There are, of course, limits to this strategy. I'm thinking of an old Bob Dole anecdote...I suspect it was in Richard Ben Cramer's What It Takes, but I don't remember for sure or have another citation for it, and so I'll allow the possibility that it might be apocryphal or, perhaps, enhanced in my telling. Running for president takes enormous discipline, an ability to repeat the same stump speech over and over and over, because of course just because the folks in Concord and Manchester may have heard it doesn't mean that people in Atlanta or Los Angeles have. Or even the people in Keene or Nashua. Bob Dole wasn't good at that, and the press (in 1988) bashed him for it. What would happen, though, is that Dole would be giving his stump speech, and he would notice the Washington press corps sitting there at the back of the room, and he'd crack a few jokes that they would (presumably) go over the heads of the audience but would make the speech a lot more fun to listen to, for reporters, than it would be to hear George Bush or Michael Dukakis mechanically repeating the same thing, in the same tone, over and over. So the press enjoyed the jokes -- and then went back to write their stories about how Bob Dole wasn't up to a presidential run because he didn't have the discipline to stick to his prepared speech.

The point is that press relations can probably buy some good will, but translating that into good coverage may turn out to be a little trickier than one might think. Also, that I absolutely love the image of the cynical press corps enjoying Dole's jokes and then tearing him down for making those jokes.

But that's not to take anything away from Greg Marx. Good story, and great catch!

Oy, Bai

Matt Bai hits the campaign trail with Jon Huntsman, and proclaims that he's being underrated as a presidential contender.

Why? Because, he says, contrary to what liberals think, most Republicans aren't nuts, and so they'll probably look for a not-crazy candidate. And: because there's nothing doing on the Democratic side, lots of independents will be voting in GOP open primaries, at least in the states that have open primaries.

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

Jonathan Chait beat me to the punch on the first part of it, and he covers it well. I'd say it slightly differently...yes, most Republicans aren't nuts (in Bai's words: "stereotypical birther types with pictures of Sarah Palin on their refrigerators and nothing but Bibles on their bookshelves"). They are, however, conservatives. All else equal, most Republicans, especially those who vote in primaries and attend caucuses, are likely to prefer a more conservative to a less conservative candidate. They might not go for a Michele Bachmann or a Herman Cain because of concerns about November, or even because they're not sure those candidates are really up to the presidency. But Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and (if he's in) Rick Perry should all be at acceptable on both counts. So Huntsman's appeal is going to be limited to actual moderates, which just isn't where the party is. The truth is that the one who is being condescending here is Bai, who apparently doesn't get that not all strong conservatives are also off their rockers.

As far as open primaries...this is one of those incredibly sophisticated hidden variables that insiders can feel all insidery for knowing about, but don't really amount to much. Bai asks what would have happened had independents in New Hampshire voted for Bill Bradley instead of John McCain in 2000. You know what? Check what happened to McCain! In very close contests, this sort of thing can make the difference, but presidential nominations are rarely close contests.

Here's what's going to happen. Everyone's attention is going to be on Iowa. Someone is going to win in Iowa; someone is going to come in second; someone is going to finish third. Odds are that those are the candidates who receive most of the publicity in the week between Iowa and New Hampshire, and candidates who do poorly in Iowa or skip it altogether will get mostly ignored -- and therefore wind up with disappointing results.

The truth is that people don't win presidential nominations by waiting for the perfect state for the demographics that give them the best chance and then running and winning there. That's just not how the game is played.

Chait believes that Huntsman is running for 2016, and Ezra Klein suspects he's running for the VP slot. Perhaps. Maybe he's just willing to take a longshot chance (it's implausible that he'll win, but not impossible). Or maybe he's just suffering from the delusions that previously affected such no-chance moderate GOP candidates as Pete Wilson, Arlen Specter, Rudy Giuliani. He wouldn't be the first.

Can't Skip Iowa

I'm not sure how much news it is that a candidate who has no plausible chance of winning the Republican nomination for president is going to use a campaign strategy that doesn't yield nominations, but anyway: Jon Hunstman is apparently skipping Iowa.

It's an excuse, at least, for a reminder. Skipping Iowa doesn't work. Most people don't pay attention to presidential politics until very late in the game. When they start paying attention -- when the non-obsessive section of the news media starts paying lots of attention -- is around the Iowa caucuses, and a candidate not playing there will, naturally, not receive the publicity that the other candidates receive. Then comes the caucuses, and another blast of publicity that the non-participant will miss. And the last bit is that the winners in Iowa will at the very least be taken more seriously, and perhaps get the kind of windfall positive publicity that Jimmy Carter in 1976 or Gary Hart in 1984 got. Note that Hart's came from a weak second place finish; the news media have to find some candidate to give the rest of the primaries and caucuses some drama.

The truth is that if you don't have a realistic chance of finishing top three in Iowa, you really don't have a realistic chance of winning the nomination. And, yes, I know that John McCain fell just short of that, but that would certainly put him in the category of having had a realistic shot at the top three.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with pretending to avoid Iowa in order to lower expectations, as McCain did, and as Mitt Romney appears to be doing this year. But really skipping Iowa? Can't do it. Not if you want to be the nominee.

Is Hunstman a Plausible Nominee?

Ezra Klein's weekend question:

In 2008, Republicans nominated a candidate who’d fought the 2003 Bush tax cuts, opposed torture, sponsored the first cap-and-trade bill introduced in the Senate, flirted with joining the Democrats, passed a campaign-finance reform law, led the fight for comprehensive immigration reform and attacked the Christian Right. So why are so many commentators so certain that the heterodoxies of Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman will disqualify them?

Well, I don't want to actually answer his literal question ("why are so many commentators..."), but I've been thinking for a while that I should write again on Huntsman, since I'm definitely one of those who do not believe that Huntsman is a plausible nominee (as regular readers know, I do think that Romney may win).

Why was John McCain a plausible nominee while Huntsman isn't? I'd say there are two major reasons. One is that McCain has advantages that Huntsman doesn't have. He brought to the campaign his war hero image, a long history of national visibility, and the experience of running a presidential campaign. Huntsman has none of that -- on the positive side, he's basically a generic former statewide officeholder, full stop. That's something; it's basically the threshold qualification. But there's no real plus beyond that. Utah is neither a large state nor one that proves him capable of winning swing or Democratic voters. He hasn't been a leader either in his party or of the conservative movement. There's just no plus there. So compared to McCain, he has similar liabilities (heterodox policy views on multiple issues, a squishy record of party loyalty) without any of McCain's advantages.

The second part of it is that John McCain won in part because every GOP candidate in 2008 had severe problems with one or more Republican-aligned group. Mike Huckabee was unacceptable on tax grounds; Mitt Romney had problems with anti-abortion groups; Rudy Giuliani...where to start? I suppose I could add Ron Paul, who national security Republicans couldn't accept. That was exactly why Fred Thompson actually stayed survived for quite some time -- he was the only candidate who would have been acceptable to every group and faction, and probably would have won the nomination if he had shown even a bit of a pulse. The problem for Huntsman this year is that Tim Pawlenty is playing the role of Thompson, and Pawlenty actually wants to be president. (I'd also argue that Romney is probably more acceptable to all factions now, having had four years for his new set of positions to set in; as I've said before, I don't think that health care is the same kind of litmus-test issue).

So, while it's always a good idea to look back at these things from time to time, I just can't see Huntsman as a plausible nominee. I can't figure out who -- in the actual Republican Party, the one that's going to select the nominee -- picks Huntsman over the other entrants. Now, there's always a possibility that something unexpected and unpredictable happens; that's part of politics, too, and, and once can certainly invent a scenario for Huntsman or any of the other implausible nominees. But for now, I don't see any reason to include him on the small list of those Republicans who have a decent shot at being nominated in 2012.

Palin! Bloomberg! Hillary! Bachmann! Huntsman!

Here's my problem.

I think Jon Huntsman's chances of running a strong presidential campaign in 2012 are tiny (even tinier than I thought; he evidently has a history of advocacy against climate change that is perhaps even less welcome in the GOP these days than his position on marriage), and that the other rational reason proposed -- that it will lay the groundwork for a 2016 campaign -- goes against history.

When it comes to understanding why he might run, however, I have a standard answer to that: you can never get inside the minds of individual politicians. That is, whatever it looks like to outsiders, maybe Hunstman does think he has a chance. Maybe he thinks that the 2012 -> 2016 strategy is smart, even if in my view it isn't. Maybe he wants a Fox News show. Maybe he has it in for Mitt Romney, and thinks this will sink the Romney campaign. Maybe it's all part of an elaborate kickback strategy concocted between Hunstman and his potential campaign consultants to scam contributors (oh, sorry; don't know what I was thinking of should I include a link to Pat Buchanan here? Better not). I've seen all of these (except the last) speculated about, and my answer is: we can't know. We can figure out what's logical, where the incentives are, but that's the limit of what we can do, when it comes to individuals.

Unfortunately, "we don't know and can't know" doesn't generate a lot of blogging excitement.

But if I want a few links, I could easily concoct some excellent scenarios and argue that Huntsman is well positioned to achieve them -- that obviously, this is what he's up to. Note: they're all as bogus as the 2016 thing! But don't tell anyone...here's three:

1. Anderson redux! Huntsman's plan is clearly to run for a few months and then drop out and pursue a third-party campaign, similar to John Anderson's from 1980.  Except this time, Huntsman has an excellent chance. He's stinkin' rich, so his campaign will be well-funded (like Ross Perot's), but he's not crazy like Perot or nearly as obscure as Anderson was. Instead, it's the Republicans now who are dominated by the crazy, and Barack Obama is far more liberal than Jimmy Carter was. By that logic, he should easily be able to combine Anderson's 7% and Perot's 19% -- and Perot's 8% in 1996. That's 34% -- a winning formula, if the vote is split exactly three ways!

2. Bloomberg/Huntsman! Well, pretty much the previous case, except add to it the can-do spirit and star power of the Mayor of New York City, the obvious launching ground for major political careers. Just look how much money the two of them have! And talk about counterintuitive appeal; everyone will be intrigued by the combination of the Jewish New Yorker and the LDS from Utah. And did I mention how much money they would have? 

4. And finally...Palin/Huntsman. Uh...I haven't really sorted this one out yet, but, you know, Sarah Palin! How about: he figures that after a couple good debates, he'll cut a deal with the Sage of Wasilla: she announces him as her running mate in late 2011, before Iowa, thus undermining Romney and giving her a bit of non-crazy credibility. She'd be unstoppable in the primaries, right! Sure!

So, that's my problem. I'm pretty sure that I could get plenty of play if I push hard enough on any of those three scenarios, perhaps with fewer exclamation points. I could even keep manufacturing others, dropping in Hillary Clinton, Michele Bachmann, or whoever else generates talk (he plans to enter the GOP contest, storm off after a debate in which he's the only sane one, and sign on to replace Joe Biden as Obama's running mate! See, this stuff is easy). Or, I can just stick to reminding people of the limits of analysis in these sort of cases. Ah, decisions, decisions. 

The Further Case Against Running -- and Losing

(Updated below)


My item on Jon Huntsman yesterday got a fair amount of pushback, not only in comments but also from Salon's Steve Kornacki, who I often agree with. To recap, I was arguing against the idea that it's a smart strategy to run in 2012 as a way of building up for a more realistic shot at the 2016 presidential race.

Kornacki argues that "running a credible first-time national effort can do wonders for a politician's national standing," and that unlikely candidates have been known to turn in those solid first-time efforts. His examples for the first point are Lamar Alexander (or, as he correctly writes, Lamar!) in 1996, Pat Buchanan in 1992, Steve Forbes in 1996, Pat Robertson in 1988, Ronald Reagan in 1976, and Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney in 2008.


Of these, I think Reagan doesn't fit, since (as Kornacki acknowledges) his first run was in 1968; more to the point, he was a major force in the party at that point, and what happened to him, in my view, tells us little about the Huntsman case. Buchanan, Robertson, and in my view Forbes also tell us little about whether running and losing would help Huntsman as a future candidate; none of those three ever really had a serious chance of being nominated by a major party, and in fact their candidacies were not, really for the nomination. I certainly agree that if Huntsman's goal is publicity or a Fox News talk show, then entering the nomination contest might help, but that has nothing to do with real presidential politics, so I'm putting it aside.


That leaves Lamar!, Huck, and Mitt. Alexander, it's true, did a whole lot better than many expected in 1996 -- but it's very hard to argue that it helped him in 2000 in any way. Kornacki talks about George W. Bush's campaign as if it came out of nowhere; he says that "under different circumstances, he could easily have been a much bigger player in the 2000 race." I disagree. Bush seemed so strong because the other candidates were weak; he defeated them. The whole point is that running a good race in 1996 didn't make Alexander a strong candidate against Bush.


As for Huck and Mitt, well, it seems a bit too early to tell. Both seem poised to make serious runs. On the other hand, I'm not sure that Romney seems any stronger now than he did in January 2007 -- does he? Huckabee, to be sure, seems a bit stronger now than he seemed to most people in 2007, but perhaps that's because he was just underrated then. In other words, I'm not really convinced -- yet -- that either of them actually has improved by running last time. The main advantage that running gave them is that no one else emerged as a strong contender. That's not nothing, but it's pretty limited.


That leaves the argument that Huntsman could, like Lamar! and some others, catch fire unexpectedly, I just don't see it. Alexander seemed boring in 1995, with no particular reason for anyone to think he'd be the one to break out of the pack, but he didn't appear to have any other significant drawbacks, and who had concentrated from early on the cycle on the early states. That's not true for Huntsman, who is almost certainly unacceptable to GOP groups that care about marriage (and who hold a veto on the nomination), and who also worked for the Obama Administration and, at best, is off to a very slow start. In other words, the problem with a Huntsman candidacy isn't that he's obscure (although he'd have to overcome that as well), but all the other baggage he brings to the race. Yes, the GOP field appears weak so far (although to some extent that's a function of the point in the cycle we're at; lots of candidates who wound up very strong in the past looked weak this far out). I can imagine an orthodox conservative candidate jumping in at this late date and making some noise. Huntsman just isn't that candidate right now.


Update: Kornacki responds. Given that I've done I think four Huntsman items now, which is like three too many, I think I'll just let him have the last word.

Huntsman

I wasn't going to bother doing an item on the big "Hunstman in '12" boomlet, but now that it's morphing into the "Hunstman in '12 so that Huntsman in '16" idea, well, sure.

In case you haven't been paying attention, we're talking about Jon Hunstman, former Republican governor of Utah, current Ambassodor to China, and noted GOP proponent of civil unions. He's leaving China amidst rumors, not knocked down, that he might run for president.

So, obviously a candidate who just spent time as part of the Obama administration, and who is off the party line on the gay issue, has no shot at the nomination this cycle. What about the theory, however, that he's positioning himself for the future?

Well, it's nuts. I mean, he might be thinking that -- for all we know, he's thinking that he'll win this time. Politicians are capable of believing all sorts of odd things. but the theory that running in order to get well known for the next time around will work is really goofy.

Let's take it this way. Since reform, the Republicans have nominated either the sitting president or the sitting vice president in 1972, 1976, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 2004. They've had relatively open contests, then, in 1980, 1996, 2000, and 2008.

The first two times, there was an extremely obvious candidate. In 1980, they had a two-time governor of the largest state in the union who was the clear leader of the dominant faction of the party for over a decade -- and who had run twice before, including almost defeating a sitting president for the nomination in 1976.

In 1996 it wasn't quite as clear, but Bob Dole was the Majority Leader of the Senate, a former VP nominee who had also run twice before, finishing as the clear runner-up in 1988.

There's nothing Jon Huntsman can do to reach that sort of status, at least without a VP nomination.

In the other two open nomination contests, in 2000 and 2008, there was no obvious candidate. The results? In 2000, a twice-elected big-state governor (and son of a president) won, in his first try. In 2008, the runner-up from 2000 won in his second try.

Obviously, Hunstman hasn't been on the George W. Bush path. Could running put him on the path that took John McCain to the nomination? Well, it would first of all require him to actually do well in 2012; if not finishing second, at least surviving, say, through New Hampshire. Is that likely? Sure doesn't look like it to me.

More to the point: OK, John McCain certainly counts as a candidate who became a national figure by running for president, and later won a nomination. That's one. Against that, there's Lamar Alexander, and Liddy Dole, and Pete DuPont, and Howard Baker, and Phil Gramm, and John Connally, and Arlen Specter, and Dick Lugar, and...I won't go on, but it's obviously a long list. Given that run-and-lose has only won one of the two truly open contests, it's hard to see any point to that.

OK, what about that VP nod, though? Two nominees (Dole and Bush) had previously been nominated for the second spot on a ticket. Huntsman would certainly move up for 2016 if he ran on the bottom of the ticket and lost (and would be in even better shape, of course, if he became vice president).

Alas, run-and-lose isn't really a great way to get on the bottom of the ticket, either. The GOP VP candidates in 1968, 1976, 1988, 2000, and 2008 had not run previously; the selections in 1980 and 1996 were former candidates. Of those, only Jack Kemp in 1996 had been a washout presidential candidate, as Huntsman is likely to be if he runs. At any rate, it's hard to see someone who would almost certainly draw a veto from Christian right groups

Of course, the chances of anyone winning a nomination are always long. Jon Huntsman probably wouldn't have been president even if he had stayed put in Utah and had stuck to the party line on every issue, just because the odds are against any particular candidate winning a nomination. It's also pretty clear that George H.W. Bush would almost certainly never have been president had he not embarked on a longshot candidacy in 1980, and John McCain would probably not have been a nominee had he not run in 2000 (could he have been? Sure. Someone had to win in 2008, and it wasn't going to be Rudy Giuliani). After all, as little evidence as there is that running and washing out after Iowa won't get you a future nomination, there's not any evidence that it would hurt, exactly. But it's an awful lot to go through with very little evidence that it would do any good.