Presidential candidates are looking for that golden ‘Moment’
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA >> Beto O’Rourke had his. Pete Buttigieg is still having his. So is Joseph R. Biden Jr. But Jay Inslee hasn’t had his, nor has John Hickenlooper. And when either Kamala Harris or Amy Klobuchar has hers, watch out.
Every four years, a group of presidential candidates have their Moment, a golden intercession when the press and the country discover their virtues, begin to consider them as strong White House contenders, conceive of them as plausible presidents. It happened to Barack Obama in the spring of 2007; he never lost that fairy dust. It happened to Howard Dean of Vermont in late 2003 and early 2004; his magic disappeared by midwinter. It happened to Dick Gephardt of Missouri twice — in late 1987 and again in early 2004; he never caught the campaign wind long enough to cruise to the Democratic presidential nomination.
“Candidates need to translate their Moments into cash,” said Bruce Nesmith, who as a political scientist at Coe College here is a veteran observer of the first caucus state. “They then need to translate both cash and fame into building organizations, both here in Iowa and around the country.”
The Moment was in the youthful hands of Sen. Gary Hart after he stunned the political establishment by upsetting former Vice President Walter F. Mondale in New Hampshire in late February 1984. Hart had the tail winds because he was new and nimble of mind, and was possessed of a sense of destiny that streamed from his intense eyes and from his possession of “new ideas.”
Overall, Hart won six more states than Mondale. On the last day of the primary season, he won the biggest prize, California.
A day later Mondale claimed sufficient delegates to win a nomination that eventually proved to be more dross than dream. But he also proved how fleeting can be the Moment.
Speed ahead four years and there was, as Barbra Streisand sang in an entirely different context, a Moment to remember. It belonged to former Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, like Hart a cerebral political figure but lacking the Coloradan’s dash and glamour.
The Babbitt Moment crystalized in a late 1987 debate, when he challenged Democrats to confront the budget deficit.
Babbitt proposed a tax on consumption (a “progressive national consumption tax”) and a “universal means test” — no farm subsidies for the rich, new taxes on Social Security for the wealthy.
“These campaign Moments are coveted ‘X factors,’ kind of mysterious, in a way fascinating, but often fleeting,” Babbitt said in a conversation the other day, in which he avowed that his Moment came because “people were casting around for a candidate they liked and weren’t finding that in any of us.”
When Babbitt actually said something sensible, at least to Democratic ears, his name was on everyone’s lips.
But not for long. Babbitt has an unusual sense of self-perception for a politician, and perhaps it is best that he tells of the denouement: “I had deficient communication skills and couldn’t take advantage of my Moment. I couldn’t make my policy proposals morph into a personal connection with voters.”
And so it disappeared like a midwinter thaw in New Hampshire, where Babbitt finished sixth and departed the race.
But not all Moments fade forever. Sen. John McCain had a 2007 Moment, then a 2007 collapse, and then — mirabile dictum — a 2008 revival.
He won the GOP nomination, and though he didn’t win the presidency, he went to his death respected by nearly everyone in American life — the principal exception being the current president, whose Moment, perhaps the unlikeliest of them all, has lasted three years.