Floaters

The 2008 presidential campaign is officially underway. On April 18, Mike Gravel, a two-term Democratic senator from Alaska who retired 25 years ago, became the first contender to formally declare his candidacy. Gravel's odds of winning the presidency, much less the Democratic nomination, are almost certainly nil. Yet his announcement won the kind of publicity that most politically irrelevant 75-year-olds can only dream of. Fifty people turned up for his news conference at the Washington Press Club, including reporters for The Washington Post and the Associated Press. Gravel was also featured on c- span, the DrudgeReport, and Fox's "Hannity & Colmes."Gravel is running for president to promote his dream of a national ballot scheme that would empower citizens to, say, declare war by referendum. After years of struggling to find an audience for his quirky views, he did the obvious thing--he declared his presidential candidacy. When the Post's Dana Milbank asked Gravel whether this wasn't a shameless publicity ploy, Gravel didn't argue the point. "That's about the size of it," he said. Gravel reminds us how ludicrously easy it has become to exploit the presidential campaign process for reasons that have nothing to do with being president. It used to be that a politician seeking even semi-serious treatment as a candidate would go numb in the hand on the rubber-chicken circuit, sucking up to local party functionaries in primary states. But, thanks to an explosion of media and the press' absurd obsession with presidential politics, all you have to do is call a press conference, sit back, and field calls from TV bookers--even if the margin of error is the only way you'll even register in the New Hampshire polls. As a result, the early days of presidential campaigns have increasingly become the playthings of second-tier pretenders exploiting easy publicity. As GravelMania reminds us, presidential campaigns are only partly about electing a commander-in-chief. Just as you can pretend to throw a ball and a dog will go galloping after it, simply "floating" your name as a presidential candidate is enough to send the press scampering after you. Nowhere is this axiom better appreciated than in the U.S. Senate. After Democratic Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut halfheartedly mused about the presidency during a 2002 visit to South Carolina, The Hartford Courant ran the breathless headline "dodd seen as `in play': the buzz is rising about presidential run." Although he never ran, Dodd is again throwing the press head fakes. Asked by a reporter last month about a 2008 candidacy, he coquettishly remarked, "It's an itch. Could grow. Could disappear. " Days later, Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro told the Courant, "Chris Dodd would make a great president of the United States." That sort of talk never hurts around the Senate cloakroom, says Democratic strategist Chris Lehane: "There's a huge pecking order within the Senate. And, if you're considered--quote-unquote--presidential timber, you occupy an ever- higher rung on that pecking order." Other master practitioners of this art are Senator Joe Biden and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who some Democrats suspect land their regular TV gigs on the basis of their presidential toe- dipping. Finally, there is Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a long-shot candidate who parlayed talk that he might run into, among other things, a recent cover profile in The New York Times Magazine. Self-aggrandizement from sitting senators is to be expected. More opportunistic are has-been politicians who milk campaign season to rehabilitate their images. A fine case study is the media buzz over former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle last November after the South Dakotan spoke at an Iowa Democratic Party dinner. Never mind that Daschle is best remembered for being continuously steamrolled by George W. Bush. Or that, according to Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen, Daschle was chosen only because state party officials didn't want a candidate serious enough to outshine their governor (and possible presidential contender), Tom Vilsack. Or that the biggest booster of a Daschle run is said to be his own longtime strategist, Steve Hildebrand. But, if Daschle is looking for an easy way to redeem himself, he may be inspired by the example of Dan Quayle, who, in 2000, perfected the art of upgrading one's image through a faux campaign. After less than ten months as a 2000 presidential hopeful, Quayle, the ex-veep forever scarred by the letter "e, " miraculously emerged as what The Weekly Standard called "the thinking man's candidate." Or maybe Daschle remembers how, in 2004, Gary Hart, while never setting foot on a debate stage, evolved from Monkey Business outcast to party wise man. For sheer audacity, however, perhaps no one will ever match the 2004 "Surreal Life" candidacy of former Illinois Democratic Senator Carol Moseley Braun, who left office accused of a variety of ethical mishaps and what the Chicago Tribune called, upon her 1998 retirement, "profound" lapses in judgment. What else was there for her to do, then, but run for president? Of course, "running" was always a figure of speech. Moseley Braun never had a campaign office in Iowa or New Hampshire, and she failed to qualify for the primary ballot in several states. Yet she was onstage for ten primary debates. And, though she contributed nothing of substance to the campaign, her charming demeanor remade her tattered image. "A worthy candidate," editorialized the Chicago Sun-Times, which, despite Braun's less than 1 percent showing in the Iowa caucuses, declared her "still a political contender." But the most ingenious of all is the politician who treats presidential politics as a buck-raking opportunity. One Saturday in January, which just happened to coincide with the publication of his new policy tome, Newt Gingrich hinted to the Associated Press that he was open to a presidential run. The story flew across the Internet, the Sunday talk shows buzzed, and soon Newt's book had shot up to number 20 on the Amazon.com best-seller list. "It never hurts to maximize opportunities," Gingrich conceded to a reporter. You don't have to explain that to Rudy Giuliani, who, despite having raised little money and hired few political staffers, has happily fanned talk about his White House prospects. But Rudy still acts more like a businessman than a politician. After Giuliani visited Iowa this week, the flurry of coverage barely noted that he'd come there not on a campaign swing but to appear at a "Get Motivated!" seminar hosted by the motivational guru Zig Ziglar. "He, to me, is the most blatant about this," says Chuck Todd, editor of the Hotline, a political tip sheet. "If he wasn't a presidential candidate, do you think he'd be as valuable to Zig Ziglar?" Of course, even Newt and Rudy can't hope to match the commercial genius of Colin Powell's 1996 non-presidential run. In 1995, Powell pondered his intentions for months--especially as he conducted a 23-city tour to support his new biography, My American Journey. Only weeks after the tour's conclusion did Powell report that, no, he wouldn't run after all. Powell's supporters (and the more than one million people who shelled out $26.95 to read about a possible future president) may have been disappointed. But Random House marketers were giddy. "It's a publicist's dream," said one to Maclean's. The danger is that, by using presidential campaigns as celebrity platforms, these smooth operators are trivializing the entire process. Consider the case of 2000 Republican candidate Gary Bauer. Although Bauer was a niche candidate, his motives were serious enough--he ran to combat corporate influence in the GOP and to revitalize the Christian right. But no one cared. Lehane recalls a winter afternoon when Bauer and Al Gore coincidentally crossed paths at a Manchester, New Hampshire, diner. "He had no one traveling with him, no cameras, and he was desperately trying to position himself to shake hands with Gore," Lehane says. "And we had this very elaborate ballet where we were trying to shield Gore." Bauer's own presidential ballet was effectively canceled after he tumbled from a stage during a pancakeflipping photo-op. By contrast, the ridiculous showman Alan Keyes--who had nothing to lose and no real campaign apparatus--body-surfed his way to the end of the primaries and final-round debates with John McCain and George W. Bush. Since the campaign, Bauer has barely been heard from. Keyes, meanwhile, scored his own TV talk show on msnbc. What's next? "Late Night With Mike Gravel"?