A campaign of living history

A campaign of living history

The 2008 presidential contest will go down as one of the most interesting, and most important, races of at least the past half-century. Why? Major crises, compelling debates and strong — indeed, historic — candidates.

Whether it was the hard times, serious national mood or a superb cast, 2008 will go down as a year of great political theater.

At this stage in past elections, we've all heard pseudo sophisticates gripe, "This is so endless and boring; wake me when it's over." Or jaded malcontents grumble, "Out of 300 million people, couldn't we get better candidates than these bums?"

(Less than a week to go: Barack Obama and John McCain race to Nov. 4 /
Gary Hershorn, Reuters)

Not this time.

As someone who covered presidential campaigns for three decades, traveling with candidates and interviewing voters, the 2008 election has crackled with the highest level of intensity in my memory.

Whether Republican nominee John McCain will defy the doomsday pollsters or Democratic candidate Barack Obama will launch a historic landslide win, the political season that began in Iowa and New Hampshire has been a vivid show diverse actors, weird plots, dumbfounded pundits. Only hindsight will tell whether 2008 was a game-changing election in the way that Roosevelt-Hoover in 1932 led to the New Deal, Kennedy-Nixon in 1960 intensified the Cold War, or Reagan-Carter in 1980 began a Republican dominance.

But there's no doubt that millions have felt a heightened sense of importance: This time it really matters. One clear reason is the gloom of impending crisis two wars, the global economy and U.S. stock market in belly-churning tumble, and 85% of Americans saying we're on the "wrong track."

Voters are energized

You only have to look around to see the evidence. Early voters swarming in lines as though free Super Bowl tickets were being dished out. New voter registrations in record numbers. In states I visited this fall, I saw a back-to-the-old-days array of yard signs and car stickers for Obama and McCain. It looked like the '60s. And campaign rallies are drawing monster 100,000-people crowds.

Another yardstick of 2008's political intensity is the way the campaign has infiltrated pop culture. Saturday Night Live skits are a hot item (who was real, Sarah Palin or Tina Fey?), Oprah, Comedy Central, David Letterman and Jay Leno are thriving on political hijinks. CNN, Fox and MSNBC are politics 24/7. And, of course, the Internet has become a Babble Machine for argument and money raising.

Sure, it's an American art form to sneer at politicians, their hypocrisy and cupidity. But even at the beginning of the 2008 campaign, the level of competitors was exceptionally high Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards and Obama for the Democrats; Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and McCain for the Republicans.

When McCain and Obama fought their way through that maze, the skepticism that we didn't get the best two Oval Office candidates quickly faded.

But a word here for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Her admirable, up-and-down persistence in the primaries and debates against Obama was to my mind the most stirring drama of 2008. The topsy-turvy narrative of Obama vs. Clinton was more fierce than most recent general elections.

A historic year for women

Give Clinton credit for lighting fires, especially among women, that have endured through the fall campaigns. And far beyond.

Nor should we ignore the cultural force of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who spiraled from "who?" to "wow!" to "whoa!" in public view. Whether she turns out to be a disaster or bonus for McCain, Palin has been a shot of Tabasco to 2008 politics.

Happily, this has been a chaotic election year when conventional wisdom and print and television pundits and polls got blindsided. Remember when McCain was too old, too broke and too disorganized to become the nominee? Or when Obama was too inexperienced, just a showboat orator, sure to be doomed by secretly racist voters?

Voters kept shoving the professionals aside and taking over the election.

Sure, there is a queasy excess too much campaign money sloshing around, too many TV ads, too many polls constantly taking temperatures in every state. But by the standards of other years the Willie Horton ad in 1988, Swift-Boating in 2004 it wasn't an excessively dirty campaign. For that we could partially thank McCain, whose sense of honor forbade employing racial overtones against Obama.

Nor can we complain that we haven't gotten enough policy detail. We were inundated by "my plan and his plan" in three presidential debates. Never mind that Congress will decide the surviving plan. What we really gauged on TV was the candidates' personas McCain aggressive behind the smiling mask, Obama quick-witted and unflappable.

When all the bluster and bloviating fade, maybe we'll remember only snippets from the TV blur: "Lipstick on a pig," "Joe the plumber," "terrorist," "socialist," "the real America," "that one," "I am not George Bush." But I hope we'll remember 2008 for an electric, engaged election, to me the most dynamic campaign in a half-century.

In a perilous year, people took charge and made their own history.