Presidential Nomination

A RECENT front-page story by Sun staff writer Rafael Alvarez on the City Life Museum's search for objects d'Bawlmer got us to wondering:With so many folks living in the suburbs, someone is bound to start a Suburban Life Museum. But stocked with what?* A strip of vinyl siding.* A tiny hexagonal sign warning that children and pets should keep off the freshly chemically treated lawns.* Orange pylons from kids' soccer leagues.* Supermarket register tapes for school computer funds.* Happy Meal gewgaws and/or Chuck E Cheese tokens.

It's said in politics that timing is everything, that success depends on picking the right time to make one's move. When Barack Obama decided in early 2007 to launch a presidential bid as a freshman U.S. senator at age 45, the naysayers wondered why he was in such a hurry. He proved them wrong. Three decades earlier, another young political comet named Jerry Brown, freshman governor of California at age 38, similarly had reached for the presidency in 1976. However, despite a late-surging campaign, he lost.

MONEY'S DECISIVE role in the 2004 presidential nomination campaign caps a trend that dates to the 1980s and is surely one of the most regrettable features of American politics today. As the Democratic and Republican national conventions bring the nomination campaign to its official close, the impact of money on voters' choices this November is clearer than ever. Money certainly was the first priority of the 10 announced Democratic contenders, long before they announced their candidacies.

It's been years since Baltimore hosted a political convention, but almost under the radar one's happening here this week. Members of the Green Party of the United States are gathering downtown starting today, opening a three-day convention to pick a presidential candidate. Jill Stein, a physician and environmental health advocate from Massachusetts is the frontrunner, with 138 of the 184 delegates assigned so far. Comedian and actress Roseanne Barr, who's been active in politics over the past decade, is running second.

What do Paul Tsongas, Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin and Douglas Wilder have in common? Their inexperience in international affairs and national security matters. The ongoing dramatic events in the Soviet Union have reminded one and all how serious a flaw that is in a candidate for a major party's presidential nomination.These Democrats, like some other possible candidates, have been insisting that domestic issues are central to the 1992 presidential campaign. As Mr. Tsongas put it during another international crisis: "The real dangers are here, not in Iraq."

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. - Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts may be the Democratic front-runner now, but it can be fairly said that his younger Senate colleague, John Edwards of North Carolina, has had a greater overall impact on the tone of the campaign heading into tomorrow's New Hampshire primary. The accentuate-the-positive posture that marked Mr. Edwards' surprise second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, coupled with the contrasting anger of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, has persuaded the Democratic presidential field to cool what was a verbal wrestling match in Iowa.

It used to be said that the presidency ought to seek the candidate rather than the other way around. Yet in recent years, individuals thought of as presidential only by their mothers have decided they ought to be in the White House and have devoted all their time (and some of your money) in pursuit of the prize. Some even got nominated, thanks to a primary system that rewards early-entering long shots. It could happen again.What national Democratic leaders urged Paul Tsongas, the former (one-term)

TWENTY-FIVE years ago this week I sat across the desk from the mayor of a big city who convinced me that the cities had a future after all.I needed convincing, because I was on a reporting tour that took me to Newark, Detroit and Cleveland -- riot scarred and, to me, hopeless.But the mayor of Indianapolis said he knew the key to urban salvation, and his ideas and his intellect converted me. I've been preaching his gospel ever since.And what is the message? Merge the city and its suburban county!

BAITING Hollywood ranks right up there with flag-waving as a safe political bet, so Bob Dole is daring his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination to stand up for the violence and sex he deplores in the entertainment industry.He'll get no takers. And Hollywood itself spooks at the weakest political "boo." Mr. Dole will get no serious fight there, either.Mr. Dole, of course, has a point. The nihilism and misogyny of some rock and gangsta rap and the gore-nography of gratuitous movie violence are social toxins, but Mr. Dole isn't so much trying to purify an apostate population as he is trying to convince the skeptical right wing of his party that he's one of them.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER of Pennsylvania, who had a brain tumor removed last year, announced this week that he is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.Apparently the surgeons didn't get it all. Or maybe they got too much. Arlen Specter has no more chance of being nominated for president than does the last Pennsylvanian who sought it. That would be Harold Stassen, a Minnesotan who has become Philadelphia's version of Ross Pierpont.In fact, I would say Specter has no more chance of being nominated for president in 1996 than does the last Pennsylvanian who was nominated.

In the spring of 1980, the race for the Republican presidential nomination got nasty. The front-runner, Ronald Reagan, said his main challenger,George H.W. Bush, wasn't a real conservative. Mr. Bush went on the attack, accusing Mr. Reagan of peddling "voodoo economics" and "a list of phony promises. " Four months later, Mr. Bush was Mr. Reagan's choice to run as vice president. He denied using the words "voodoo economics" - at least until NBC News found a videotape of the speech.

Republican wishful thinkers like to rationalize away the damage being inflicted on their party by the intramural mudslinging among its unimpressive field of presidential candidates. After all, they note, in 2008 Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clintonwent at it pretty hot and heavy, and their party won the election anyway. However, there are significant differences between then and now that suggest the GOP is paying a much bigger price for its circular firing squad among Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul than the Democrats did in their two-sided primary fight four years ago. Most obvious and significant is that, for all the heat generated by Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton, they differed relatively little on major issues.

The two leading Democrats for the 2008 presidential nomination are, according to recent polls, Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois. This month the latter received a very warm reception in his first visit to New Hampshire, where presidential primaries begin, and he said he thought his new-found popularity showed the nation was "looking for something different - we want something new." The next day Clinton said she was talking to people about her plans, and said she would decide whether to seek the presidential nomination next month.

MONEY'S DECISIVE role in the 2004 presidential nomination campaign caps a trend that dates to the 1980s and is surely one of the most regrettable features of American politics today. As the Democratic and Republican national conventions bring the nomination campaign to its official close, the impact of money on voters' choices this November is clearer than ever. Money certainly was the first priority of the 10 announced Democratic contenders, long before they announced their candidacies.

WASHINGTON - John Kerry's early clinching of the Democratic presidential nomination gives him one practical advantage: plenty of time to deliberate and make a wise choice in the matter of his running mate. Kerry could easily choose the last man standing against him, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, as a dynamic young campaigner who would bring more vitality to the ticket and conceivably clinch a number of Southern states. But if history is a guide, the Massachusetts senator will allow himself a period in which to stir the pot, generate public interest and not incidentally find out more about the prospective choices available to him. Other presidential nominees have not always had that luxury.

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. - Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts may be the Democratic front-runner now, but it can be fairly said that his younger Senate colleague, John Edwards of North Carolina, has had a greater overall impact on the tone of the campaign heading into tomorrow's New Hampshire primary. The accentuate-the-positive posture that marked Mr. Edwards' surprise second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, coupled with the contrasting anger of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, has persuaded the Democratic presidential field to cool what was a verbal wrestling match in Iowa.

ED MUSKIE is 80 today. His friends gave him a birthday roast in Washington two weeks early. As speakers made needling comments about him, he replied, "That is a lie, and the American people know it is a lie."That's a reprise of what was probably his finest hour. In 1970, President Nixon made a nationally-televised speech attacking Democratic congressional candidates for being "pro-criminal." Democrats chose Muskie, their 1968 vice presidential nominee, to respond. He said of Nixon's charge, "That is a lie, and the American people know it is a lie."

NEW YORK -- With the familiar hardwood under his feet and his retired jersey No. 24 hanging from the rafters, Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Bradley high-fived his aging former teammates and broke into a wildly uncharacteristic midcourt jig yesterday at Madison Square Garden.As first a basketball player for the New York Knicks and then a senator for New Jersey, Bradley was not known for outpourings of emotion. But yesterday marked a new era for the Hall of Famer, one in which he began earnestly capitalizing on his athletic history in an effort to connect with voters.

WASHINGTON -- Now that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has won the endorsements of two of the nation's largest labor unions -- representing service and governmental employees -- his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are grasping for some kind of life preserver. Temporarily, at least, they latched onto his recent gaffe involving pickup truck drivers flaunting Confederate flags to charge him with insensitivity to blacks and Southern whites and with having a loose and thus dangerous tongue.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush kicked off his drive for re-election last night before an audience of well-heeled Republican donors, saying he has built a solid record as a wartime leader, education reformer and steward of an economy that's well on the path to recovery. Campaign officials said they expected the fund-raiser -- a $2,000-a-plate event to benefit the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign -- to haul in $3.5 million. Addressing nearly 1,400 people at the Washington Hilton Hotel, the president spoke fervently about how he had guided America after the horrific attacks of Sept.