Gail Collins: Born-Yesterday Candidates

[babylonsister]

Born-Yesterday Candidates

By GAIL COLLLINS
Published: December 6, 2007


The presidential campaign is sure getting hot. Mike Huckabee is inching ahead of Mitt Romney in Iowa, precipitating a fascinating national debate about whether Mormons or Baptists love Jesus more. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are engaged in a battle over who has wanted to be president longer — or rather, less long.

“I have not been planning to run for president for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for,” said Obama in (where else?) Iowa.

“He says that day after day,” said Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s spokesman. This sounded to the Hillaryites like a diss, and, indeed, Obama did appear to be suggesting that she was the product of long-running crass ambition while he, reluctant soldier, was simply responding to his country’s call.

“So we put out a document, finally, that had all the instances of his saying he wanted to run for president,” Wolfson explained.

The evidence began with a magazine article that claimed that Obama started planning his campaign when he became a senator in 2005. This was followed by quotes from friends and relatives attesting that he had mentioned his aspirations in 1992, 1988 and the third grade. Finally came the coup de grâce: testimony from his kindergarten teacher that back when he was 5, little Barack had written an essay titled: “I Want to Become President.”

Adding the childhood homework, Wolfson said yesterday, “was clearly an unwise thing to do.” So unwise, in fact, that the campaign attempted to argue that it was meant as a joke. (This was a hard sell since, as Patrick Healy of The Times noted, when the Clinton campaign jokes, it tells you it’s joking.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/opinion/06collins.html?hp