Chicago Tribune Editorial - The great ship approaches

Chicago Tribune Editorial - The great ship approaches
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published May 12, 2007


Think of a ship sailing in a thick fog. We, the people stand on shore, not very comfortable with the way things are, looking out to sea, into that wall of fog, anticipating what the fates will deliver. Just the prow of the great presidential ship protrudes from the fog. Too many people are on deck, all angling to get the point position.

How do they do that?

For the Republicans, it involves invoking just the right saints (Ronald Reagan being the most important) and the right rhetoric to send the message that this election is not about the Bush administration, but doing it in a way that does not offend the 30 percent of the electorate that is still firmly behind the president. That group forms the heart of the Republican Party, the base, the likely primary voters.

Talking tough is part of this process. It's not enough to say you want to kill Osama bin Laden. Up the ante by claiming you want to chase him into a cave and kill him with your bare hands, or perhaps dice him up into little chunks. Or kill him two or three times. The fact that everyone from the Oval Office on down to the exhausted American soldier in the distant Afghan mountains also would like to kill him is immaterial.

The Democrats are talking to their base, too, and what it wants most to hear now (along with a substantial part of the general population) is that the war in Iraq can be brought to a close. Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York senator, has now shifted into a much more aggressive stance on ending a war she voted to authorize. She wants to block access for Barack Obama, the Illinois senator who was anti-war before it was popular to be anti-war, to the prow of that great ship. She has to stay up front.

At this stage for both parties, then, it is a remarkably primitive dance on the deck. We can't really know whose rhythmic steps will guide him or her to the point of the prow, which is why we have to keep watching that ship as it emerges from the fog.

One thing you might notice if you were actually a candidate on the ship, to push the metaphor a bit, is that the shoreline keeps mutating. With Florida's decision to hold its primary near the end of January, it now appears that late January and early February, crammed full of primaries and caucuses, could decide the two parties' choice of presidential candidates.

This has set off a determined skirmish among officials in the various states -- Illinois included -- to get as close to the front as possible, like hungry scamps at a boys' school when word slips out there is something palatable for lunch.

If this keeps up, New Hampshire will be holding its primary on Labor Day, or sooner, depending on whether Florida and California respond with their elbows. For the record, the Granite State's secretary of state, William M. Gardner, said a few days back that moving the vote to December is "not beyond the realm of possibility."

It's enough to make your holiday bells jingle.

This candidate deck crowd will wither almost before you know it, the fog will lift, and the shape of next year's race (or maybe even late this year's race) will become much more clear, with two candidates and whomever else the process may deliver (Remember Ralph Nader?) up front.

But not just yet. Cue the foghorn.