"Commentary"-Countdown to Election Day
Tuesday, December 12, 2006SUSIE GHARIB: Tonight's commentator says don't be distracted by Christmas. The real big event is still to come. Here's Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the editorial page of "The Wall Street Journal."
DANIEL HENNINGER, DEPUTY EDITOR, WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL PAGE: There may be only 12 shopping days until Christmas, but if you want real pressure, there are only about 680 days until the next presidential election. Get cracking! And many are -- McCain, Brownback, Giuliani, Clinton, Biden, Vilsack. The list of early presidential shoppers seems endless. The final purchase, though, gets made by voters in 2008.
We, of course just had an election, and the exit polls were revealing. Thirty six percent said they voted against Bush, but 40 percent said he wasn't a factor. The most important issue -- at 41 percent -- was corruption, not Iraq. Married voters still tended to vote Republican but by a narrow margin, 50 to 48 percent. And self-identified independents were 26 percent of the electorate this time. This was not a highly ideological election. Voters seemed to trend toward the political center. This might suggest that presidential victory in 2008 lies at the center.
But how does a candidate get there? The center is not a party. Most party voters still lie pretty far on the left or the right. Historically, it's been hard to secure a nomination through presidential primaries if a candidate ignores the left or right. More than ever, 2008 looks like an election for political contortionists, stretching from the center out to the extremes and some of them are surely going to snap. Stay tuned, the run to 2008 is going to be very interesting. I'm Dan Henninger.
