Published: March 26, 2008 12:43 am            

Democrats squander a golden opportunity

If humorist Will Rog-ers suddenly came back to life in 2008, Oklaho-ma’s favorite son would feel right at home.

“I’m not a member of any organized political party,” Rogers once said, “I’m a Democrat.”

Presented with an op-portunity to retake the White House after eight years, the Democrats are letting it slip through their fingers.

On paper, things couldn’t be better for the Democrats. The incumbent president has an approval rating of 32 percent. The war and the economy continue to weigh on the nation’s psyche and have fostered unhappiness with the present administration.

In the Republican camp, the fact the sitting vice president was not running for the top job prompted a number of candidates to seek the nomination, fostering spirited, and occasionally rancorous, debate.

The Democrats fielded a number of candidates of their own, but it became obvious early on it was a two-person race.

The picture changed when one Republican candidate emerged, Sen. John McCain, but his unpopularity among many party conservatives still seemed to work in the Democrats’ favor.

And where is John McCain these days? With the nomination wrapped up, he is looking positively presidential, traveling to Iraq and Israel, weighing in on the economy and the war.

It is the war that has propelled McCain past both Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in some polls. Recent Gallup and Los Angeles Times polls showed McCain was favored over both Clinton and Obama as the candidate most capable of handling the war.

For the moment, the only war the Democratic candidates are focusing on is the one they are waging with one another.

The Democratic campaign has degenerated into sniping and name-calling, charge and counter-charge.

Arizona Gov. Bill Richardson, who made his own a brief and un-successful run at the nomination, recently broke ranks with his friends the Clintons and endorsed Obama.

That prompted Clinton strategist James Carville to compare Richardson to Judas, pointing out his “act of betrayal” came during Holy Week.

Of course, this came weeks after Obama’s foreign policy adviser quit over calling Hillary Clint-on a “monster” but just days after Sen. Clinton’s hubby impugned Obama’s patriotism.

Obama has had to endure the fallout from the inflammatory comments by his former pastor, while Hillary still is trying to explain why she “misspoke” last week when she made a routine trip to Bosnia in 1996 sound a whole lot more dangerous than it was.

Not that McCain is immune from foot-in-mouth disease. He managed to link both himself and the commanding U.S. general in Iraq, David Petraeus, with Osama bin Laden, after bin Laden’s latest audio tape urged his followers to join the al-Qaida fight in Iraq, calling the country “the greatest opportunity and the biggest task.”

McCain was trying to illustrate the point the U.S. can’t afford a precipitous pullout from Iraq, but he managed to give the Democrats more fodder to use against him, when they get past taking potshots at each other, that is.

The longer Demo-crats take to choose a nominee, the better for John McCain. Should the infighting, name-calling and backbiting continue until the Dem-ocratic convention in late August in Denver, the candidate who emerges will do so with tattered credibility and be blistered by the spotlight of intense media scrutiny — all before the real race even begins.

To sum up the present presidential race, we turn once again to that sage of the sagebrush, Will Rog-ers, who said: “The difference between a Re-publican and an Demo-crat is the Democrat is a cannibal, they have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why they live off the Democrats.”



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.