Dream Candidates

Lawrence O'Donnell can't seem to get his head out of The West Wing.

It's as though he sees the world through a President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet prism.

At least invoking President Martin Sheen in his column in The Washington Post on Sunday isn't completely off the wall. It does make some sense this time.

In "Where Are You, Dream Candidate?" O'Donnell focuses on the phenomenon of looking for the perfect candidate, too perfect to be real.

He writes that "the search for the dream candidate never dies."

I suppose.

Now the Republicans are looking to a TV star, Fred Thompson of "Law & Order" fame, as their dream candidate for president. We've been here before, watching uninspiring presidential candidates jockey for the nomination while the dream candidate lurks offstage. Mario Cuomo was the Fred Thompson of 1992. Cuomo was not a TV star, but the New York governor was by far the most telegenic Democrat out there. Cuomo actually let his offstage candidacy haunt the declared Democratic candidates up until the deadline for filing candidacy papers for the New Hampshire primary. As long as he toyed with the idea of running, Cuomo towered over the Democratic field -- Bill Clinton, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin, Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown.

...Next time around, Gen. Colin Powell took his turn as the dream candidate who never entered the race. His long public flirtation with the 1996 Republican nomination wound up amounting to little more than highly profitable book-tour posturing.

Cuomo's and Powell's dalliances drastically shortened the patience of the media, campaign contributors and voters with offstage dream candidates. Thompson will not be allowed nearly as much time to declare his candidacy. And if he does finally run, he should not expect his poll numbers to go through the roof. On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a former dream candidate turned real candidate, has found himself running a solid but distant second to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. Meanwhile, Obama has had to endure constant speculation about whether a former real candidate turned dream candidate -- former vice president Al Gore, whose new book, "The Assault on Reason," will be published Tuesday -- will eventually jump into the race and run away with the party's nomination.

The logic behind all this is simple enough: Campaign organizers and contributors look for dream candidates because they don't think they can win with the lot they have. The media look for dream candidates because they're fun. (If Thompson gets into the race, his press bus is going to be the place to be.) And the voters look for dream candidates because they crave authenticity.

The problem with dream candidates is that they aren't human. They don't exist outside of the imagination. They're figments of hope.

O'Donnell makes some good points about the desire for dream candidates and the public's need to create them.

But then, his column takes a drastic turn to the absurd.

[T]he two most authentic candidates in the field are Democrats Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Joe Biden of Delaware. Unfortunately for them, they are authentic senators -- not a group that voters usually promote to higher office.

With all due respect, that's nuts.

The last term I would apply to Dodd or Biden is "authentic."

O'Donnell then begins to fantasize about "the ultimate dream candidate: the third-party savior."

Imagine a Ross Perot who doesn't turn completely flaky in the home stretch. Imagine a Ross Perot with real governing experience. Imagine a Ross Perot with proven bipartisan appeal. Imagine Republican New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is finding thinly veiled excuses to make speeches in places such as Texas and Oklahoma and whose chief political strategist has let it leak that he is studying 50-state ballot access for independent presidential candidates. Bloomberg may keep the hope of a dream candidate alive for another year.

Bloomberg?

Bloomberg as the ultimate dreamboat?

Not in my dreams.