Freedom Line Blog

Over the weekend, Alexandra Petri had a fun little opinion piece over at the Washington Post about “Mitt Romney’s First-World Problems.” It’s an entertaining meditation on why Romney’s life — which is something approaching the American ideal — doesn’t make for a great campaign season narrative. The most effective passage, however has nothing to do with Romney:

Some professions make peculiar demands. The ideal life for a president is full of bootstrap-pulling and high drama. It runs something like this: You were born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free, raised in the woods so’s you knew every tree, and were offered the choice to kill a bear but did not take it when you were only 3. You spent the next 15 years studying and working in your all-American town and somehow wound up at an institution of higher learning that was prestigious — but not offputtingly prestigious. Then you became a war veteran. Next you governed a state whose priorities aligned exactly with those of your party, and during this time you created tens of thousands of jobs. Also, you are capable of stringing together a sentence without looking excruciatingly pained.

That described Rick Perry until the last clause.

That is brutal — and totally correct. It’s a reminder of how different this election season could have been if Rick Perry had come loaded for bear. And it’s also a helpful lesson for voters: even the most enticing biography won’t save a candidate whose performance on the stump leaves voters unable to picture him in the Oval Office. Thus does Rick Perry take his seat alongside Fred Thompson and Wesley Clark in the “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” club.

Apologies for the post-Super Bowl football metaphor, but Jay Cost’s newest commentary made me do it.  Cost argues that “The Fred Thompson Experience” proved that the right strategy for announcing a presidential candidacy is to wait until voters actually start tuning in to candidates.  That doesn’t happen 21 months before the election.  By letting his rivals expend time and money placating the media’s interest for months, Fred Thompson easily catapulted to the front of the line for one simple reason: he was new to the field.  (His failure to capitalize was another matter.)

For just about every serious GOP contender speaking at CPAC this weekend the temptation will be to ride the media wave into an early announced run for president.  After reading Cost’s analysis, perhaps they should wait until the House GOP and President Barack Obama have sparred this year to see which issues are the most relevant when voters start caring.