Presidential campaigns underway
Breaking news – Hillary Eats Burrito Bowls
With the rate people are declaring their runs for the presidency, every man, woman and child in America might decide to jump into the race.
I’m not complaining.
It’s just an observation.
Since Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announced he’s running on March 23, there’ve been three more high-profile announcements.
Ironically, they’ve all been U.S. Senators.
Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Cruz have been, like President Obama, first term senators.
Hillary Clinton, the only Democrat to declare, served in the Senate for parts of two terms before she became the U.S. Secretary of State.
It’s interesting to note, I suppose, that there could be as many as four more 2016 presidential candidates who’ve also served in the U.S. Senate.
Those mentioned as possible candidates are Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, John Thune of South Dakota and Bob Corker of Tenn.
What’s with all of the senators wanting to become president?
I don’t know.
When Obama was elected in 2008, it had been 36 years since the previous person who’d held that position, Richard Nixon, was re-elected in 1972.
In fact, of the 44 U.S. presidents, only 16 of them had served as senators.
There’d been three senators in a row between 1961 and 1974, (John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Nixon), but consecutive terms by former senators are the exceptions rather than the rules.
Bob Dole, Al Gore, John Kerry and John McCain had one thing in common. They had all served in the senate.
The second thing they had in common? They lost in the bids to become president.
Enough of the miscellany (notice how I slipped in that uncommon four syllable word)?
Let’s talk facts.
With 568 days until Election Day 2016, hardly any of the declared candidates have been worthy of much national coverage.
Oh, Rand Paul kicked off his campaign with some mighty testy interviews with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and CNBC’s Kelly Evans.
Paul apparently doesn’t like to talk about positions he’s changed as frequently as his underwear.
That led to some coverage that the potential president might have a little problem when it comes to being challenged forcefully by women.
Having never been a woman, nor ever having interviewed Rand Paul, I can only say he only appears to be somewhat irritable from this distance.
But that charge of sexism led his wife, Kelly Paul, to come to his defense.
“That is not who Rand is, at all,” she told the New York Times. “Rand’s entire professional career is working with female surgeons. His longtime partner in his ophthalmology practice was a very accomplished high achieving female surgeon.”
So there.
His wife doesn’t think he’s a sexist.
Meanwhile, Ted Cruz, after an hour-long interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, hasn’t really surfaced much since his declared candidacy. He’s only let slip through the media, that his Super-PAC has been able to amass large sums of money ($31 million) through his wealthy donors.
As hungry as the national media has been to get the declared candidates to come out swinging, only Marco Rubio seems to be the only one who freely obliges.
If he can point a finger at Hillary Clinton, or at her former boss, Barack Obama, he’ll take every opportunity to do that.
Clinton, by the way, had the lowest of low-key presidential declarations.
She put out a video.
Then she rode in a caravan to Iowa.
The national media had to resort to showing her ordering a burrito bowl at a Chipotle.
There were no press pictures of the “event.” We saw her standing at a counter through the lens of a security camera.
“Sign of the times: Hillary goes to Chipotle, not McDonald’s,” said the headline on CNNMoney.com.
Some editor, somewhere thought it might be newsworthy to compare Bill and Hillary Clinton’s lunch choices.
Beneath a picture of Bill Clinton leaving a McDonald’s in 1992, and Hillary’s grainy Chipotle picture, there was this breathless comparison: “Bill Clinton loved a Big Mac and fries, but it looks like Hillary is a fan of burrito bowls and beans.”
Really?
Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20 year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net
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