How Weak is the Republican Field?

Very, very weak according to Ezra Klein:

Does the 2012 Republican primary field feel a little…thin to anyone else?

In 2008, Republicans fielded five candidates who looked, at various points in the process, like plausible nominees and even plausible presidents: Mitt Romney, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee.

[…] Why have so many GOP heavyweights — think Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie, to name just a few — sat this one out?

Clearly there’s something to this. But less than you might think. In the first place, I don’t think Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan sat this one out. They ran, they just didn’t make it to the primaries. The “Invisible Primary” is still a Primary. A number of things persuaded them, as they convinced Tim Pawlenty, to withdraw from the race. Mainly, of course, the realisations that they didn’t want it enough and weren’t likely to win.

Running for President is hard work (ask Rick Perry about that) and perhaps they weren’t ready to spend months living in cheap hotels in Iowa and New Hampshire, pretending that Iowans and Granite staters are the best Americans of them all. Running for the Presidency requires enormous quantities of discipline and patience plus an inexhaustible belief in oneself and a humiliating willingness to do whatever it takes to raise the cash needed to make any kind of impact. You need a pretty ghastly combination of arrogance and determination to even attempt it. It’s hard work and too much work for most. Plus, you need to be good at politics.

Which is why it’s actually unusual for there to be more than a couple of plausible candidates in any primary field. Hindsight makes this clear, of course, but it was pretty damn clear in 2000, for instance, that George W Bush was going to be the GOP nominee. His rivals were John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes and Steve Forbes. Among those who fell before Iowa: Liddy Dole, Lamarr Alexander and Dan Quayle. Suddenly the 2012 field doesn’t look so thin does it?

Nor was 1996 exactly a banner year. True, Bill Clinton seemed a formidable obstacle and Colin Powell and Pete Wilson decided not to run but Bob Dole beat Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Lamar Alexander, Alan Keyes, Richard Lugar, Phil Gramm, Morry Taylor and Bob Dornan. How many “plausible Presidents” do you see in that list? Gramm and Lugar scarcely troubled the scorers while Alexander had third place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and not much else. 

How about 2004 on the Democratic side of things? Well the candidates who reached the primaries were: John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich. We all know what happened to Howard Dean. Gephardt was humiliated in Iowa and dropped out. Lieberman’s camapaign was a forlorn embarrassment from start to humiliating finish and Wesley Clark flickered briefly but, being a political novice, never really looked like the next President of the United States.

There’s a difference between seeming kinda credible on paper – Gephardt, Clark – and actually being credible out there in the field. And that’s how it was for the GOP last time around as well. Rudy Giuliani was a paper candidate and Fred Thompson’s credibility expired almost as soon as he actually declared his official candidacy. Meanwhile, if Ezra thinks Mike Huckabee ever looked like a guy with the staying power to be the nominee then he’s recalling a different campaign to the one I remember.

The 2008 Democratic primary was unusual in having two obvious top-tier candidates (Clinton and Edwards) plus the intriguing presence of Barack Obama who, as we know, offered something unusually different. But the reasonably drawn-out Obama vs Clinton struggle was unusual, not typical of the way these things tend to go.

None of this means 2012 is a banner year for Republicans. But if this field of contenders is manifestly unattractive it’s not unusually so. Again, Barbour and Daniels and co did run. They just decided pretty early in the process that the game was a pretty bad bet and so it was better to quit before it became embarrassing. Ditto Pawlenty.

This ain’t a compelling squadron of candidates but it’s not, I think, unusually thin since most years the choice is pretty quickly winnowed to two or at most three semi-plausible candidates. That’s happened this time too even if, like the Demcrats in 2004 (albeit in more favourable circumstaces for the opposition) few people are much enthused by the choice available.

Where are the heavyweights? As in boxing, there aren’t many in the first place and of those there are few are any good.

[Via Andrew]