Perspective

Super Tuesday: A double main event

This is the most exciting presidential contest in decades. Please don't let it end now.

By PHILIP GAILEY
Published February 3, 2008

FEBRUARY 5, 2008  

FOR THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION

- Hillary Clinton VS. Barack Obama 

FOR THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION

- John McCain VS. Mitt Romney

I admit it - I'm a junkie. I thought I was cured, but this presidential campaign hooked me with the first debate. So tell me it's not going to be over after Super Tuesday. Not now, when voters in almost half of the 50 states have yet to go to the polls.

For some of you, this primary campaign can't end soon enough. But political junkies and the commentariat, myself included, would sink into extreme withdrawal if the curtain came down on this political drama now. This is the most exciting presidential contest in decades. It has had political funerals, near-death experiences and resurrections. We are counting on Super Tuesday voters to at least keep the historic Democratic race open, forcing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to fight on until one of them has enough delegates to close the deal.

If a Republican and Democrat emerge from Tuesday's voting with a decisive victory, we will have to find other ways to feed our addiction. For a while, we thought we could fall back on New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who has toyed with the idea of running for president as an independent this fall. But Bloomberg reportedly has decided it would be a waste of his time and money. Of course, there is always the possibility that Ralph Nader could jump in as a spoiler, but I'd rather not even think about that.

It has only been a month since the first votes in the presidential nomination contest were cast, and look at where we are - a two-person race in each party going into Super Tuesday, when two dozen states, including California and New York, have the potential to turn things upside down but probably won't. The Democratic contest has come down to a choice between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, one of whom could emerge from Tuesday's voting as the clear front-runner. There are four Republicans left standing, if you count Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, but Super Tuesday is really a showdown between John McCain and Mitt Romney.

This is where things stand after only six states - Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Michigan and Florida - have had their turn culling the herd. Let's roll the tape back to Iowa, which insists on going first.

Iowa's Democratic caucusgoers launched Obama into orbit with an impressive victory, even as they eliminated Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, good men with good ideas who could not compete with the celebrity of Obama and Clinton, one of whom is poised to make history as the first black or the first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination.

Iowa Republicans gave first place to Mike Huckabee, a Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor who appealed to evangelicals. As a result, we were forced to treat him as a serious candidate for weeks, even though he hasn't won anything since Iowa. At least his personal charm and folksy wit lightened up the GOP debates.

New Hampshire then had its turn. Obama floated into the nation's first primary state on poll numbers so high that even the Clinton campaign was braced for a crushing defeat. However, Granite State voters decided to rewrite the script. They gave Clinton a narrow victory that saved her campaign from collapse and sent her off to Nevada, where she won that state's caucuses. And New Hampshire Republicans did even more for John McCain - they raised him from the political dead in the greatest resurrection since Lazarus.

By the time the campaign reached South Carolina, things started really getting interesting. Bill Clinton took over the microphone as his wife's chief surrogate and was almost booed off the stage by leading Democrats around the country, especially after he tried to dismiss Obama as just another Jesse Jackson. When the votes were in, Obama had won a stunning 2-to-1 victory over Hillary Clinton, which was followed by the endorsement of Ted and Caroline Kennedy, the brother and daughter of the slain president.

South Carolina Republicans trashed and smeared McCain in 2000, but this time they handed him a critical victory just days before the Florida primary. They also sent Fred Thompson lumbering off the presidential stage as one of the year's biggest political fizzles.

Last week, Florida was up, and state Republicans elevated McCain to front-runner status and left Romney gasping for air and reaching deeper into his personal fortune to keep hope alive. Rudy Giuliani gambled everything on Florida and lost it all. On the Democratic side, Clinton claimed a big win that was widely discounted, if not dismissed, because she and the other Democratic candidates had boycotted Florida, which was stripped of its delegates by the national party.

Now, Super Tuesday voters could decide the two parties' presidential nominees or they could tell the candidates to slog on. For all its flaws, our presidential primary system winnowed the 2008 field to each party's two strongest candidates. I guess that should be some consolation to those voters who never had a say in the matter.

[Last modified February 2, 2008, 22:24:38]