MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa -- Tom Vilsack's moment in the presidential sun came yesterday in a gymnasium, and it lasted about 17 minutes. It ended with a couple of blasts of red, white and blue confetti fired from a metal cannon off-stage while a beat-and-blow band played the Four Tops' tune "I'll Be There."
And with that the 55-year-old, two-term Iowa governor, the first Democrat to officially enter the 2008 presidential race, prepared to head to the airport, hoping to catch a little more sunlight in Pennsylvania and three early and likely make-or-break primary or caucus states - New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
Whatever drama there was in the presidential candidacy declaration is long gone, pummeled by months and months of candidates first expressing qualified interest in running, then playing footsie on the Sunday morning talk shows and then setting up exploratory campaign committees that might or might not result in their running.
Vilsack's declaration, on the campus of Iowa Wesleyan University and in the town where he served as mayor for five years, produced a news media response that reflects the diminished stature of the official announcement. CNN showed only excerpts. Midway through Vilsack's speech, MSNBC's John Harwood - standing only 50 feet from the governor - delivered a live report about Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a prepared but not-out-of-the-oven Republican presidential candidate.
An hour before people started arriving at Vilsack's announcement, Fox News was talking about a marquee confrontation between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two perpetually exposed Democrats in the might-be-but-not-quite-yet phase of running for president.
The declining status of the official announcement might say as much about the news media's attention deficit disorder as it does about the continuing campaign by candidates to get noticed. But the reality is that Vilsack is running and now his job is to attract attention to himself - and, ultimately, to become the first candidate from the Midwest elected president in more than a half-century.
"Let us stop the endless partisan debate and empty talk," said Vilsack, who in 1998 became the state's first Democratic governor in 32 years. As he told the crowd of several hundred supporters, he has "always been the underdog and long shot" and has "always been inspired by stories of ordinary people who struggled but ultimately succeeded."
