WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON - In the strange world of politics, the worse your party does, the better its top job looks.
The chairmanship of the Republican National Committee grew a lot more attractive recently, after John McCain failed to win the presidency and the percentage of voters who call themselves Republicans fell to the lowest level in nearly 30 years.
Republicans are without an obvious leader - Sarah Palin's celebrity notwithstanding - and the job of RNC chairman, which comes up in January, is a valuable perch for someone with national ambitions.
It's a chance to be a leading spokesman, on television and at events around the country. It's also an opportunity to help reshape the party's image and make a bigger name for yourself.
That's why a swarm of contenders, including former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, are after the job and why the competition could get fierce.
"It's always good to start from a low threshold. It makes you look better than you are, anyway," said former national chairman Bill Brock.
Brock grabbed the Republican leadership in the 1970s, a time not unlike today. He helped the party regain power faster than many thought possible and got rewarded in the process.
Just as Republicans lost the 2006 and 2008 elections, they suffered back-to-back drubbings in 1974 and 1976, an election that cost Brock his Senate seat from Tennessee and put a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, into the White House for the first time in eight years.
Brock, now an Annapolis resident, thinks it will be tougher for his party to rebound this time than when he was in charge.
That's "because [Barack] Obama is a terrifically talented politician, and I think will be a terrifically talented leader," he said in an interview. "We were very lucky. We had Jimmy Carter. He was perhaps my biggest asset."
After Republican challenger Ronald Reagan unseated Carter in 1980, Brock joined the administration as U.S. trade representative and later became labor secretary.
The next time a Republican was evicted from the White House, in 1992, a similar scenario played out.
There was a spirited fight for the party chairmanship, involving a number of talented politicians who would go on to be important players on the national scene.
John Ashcroft was the best-known contender. He was a popular two-term governor of Missouri but wasn't eligible to run again. A single term in the U.S. Senate was still in his future, as was his appointment as President George W. Bush's first attorney general.
