WINNERS:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, tops my list. He was vaulted into office by a recall election that was really a Republican coup masquerading as democracy. But everybody loves Arnold, and we should never underestimate the power of personality in politics. Maria Shriver is also a winner. She stood by her man when predictable charges of womanizing surfaced, providing the necessary inoculation. And once her husband was in office, she used her Kennedy credentials to lobby Democratic legislators to back Arnold’s bailout plan for California.
Howard Dean started the year as an asterisk in the polls, so far behind that when a political writer termed him “a credible long shot,” Dean took it as a compliment. Now he’s the probable Democratic nominee for president. Whatever Dean’s ultimate fate, he has revolutionized politics by bringing ordinary people back into the process through the Internet. A quarter of Dean’s Internet contributors are under 30 years of age, a demographic conquest that is the envy of the sclerotic Democratic National Committee. The DNC’s mailing list is heavy on aging New Dealers.
Dean’s campaign manager, Joe Trippi, makes the winner’s circle. He took the lessons he learned as a consultant for startups in the Internet world and applied them to politics. If the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan said, then Trippi deserves much of the credit for the success of the Dean movement to re-engage disaffected voters by building an Internet community.
By endorsing Dean, Al Gore transformed himself from a joke line on the late-night shows to Democratic kingmaker, eclipsing for the moment, though not usurping, Bill Clinton’s role as top dog in the party. If Dean should become president, Gore is a likely secretary of State. If Dean loses, Gore’s consolation prize is that he managed once again to distance himself from Clinton, which must be emotionally satisfying.
Hillary Clinton ends the year a big winner. She sold well over a million copies of her memoir and she tops most national surveys as the Democrat most Democrats would like to see in the White House. Some diehards still imagine a scenario where she swoops into the convention and accepts a last-minute draft, but Hillary is keeping her nail polish dry until 2008, or 2012, when she will have solidified her image as a national leader and not just Mrs. Bill.
