Here’s a new rule to apply to aspiring presidential candidates: If you have to say you’re considering a run this early, you’re likely not in the top-tier candidate pool.
For the third tier candidate, being coy is a vice — not a virtue.
Take John Bolton, the former U.N. ambassador known for his trademark bushy mustache, who sat down with the National Review to stress his seriousness about pursuing the highest office in the land.
“It’d maybe be a little unorthodox,” he admitted to reporter Robert Costa, in what perhaps will turn out to be one of the biggest understatements of the nascent 2016 campaign.
There’s former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, ten months after being hoisted out of Congress, milling around the Iowa State Fair, almost unrecognized.
“It’s very easy to go up to people, like, ‘Hey!’ But people don’t want that, like that lady,” Brown told the Des Moines Register.
He also plainly laid out his intentions to the Boston Herald. ”I am curious,” he said. “I want to get an indication of whether there’s even an interest, in Massachusetts and throughout the country, if there’s room for a bi-partisan problem solver.”
When I emailed a former Brown aide about what political minds were guiding this phase, I was told the candidate was basically steering the ship solo.
Rep. Peter King assured The Hill he’s not playing games either. ”I’m seriously looking at it,” he said with a level of seriousness required to earn a news clip in the era where everything any politician utters counts as “news.”
At least the other King — Steve, from Iowa — played it cool without issuing comment when reporters inquired about his trip to South Carolina next week. That’s a level of savvy not usually applied by the wanna-be contender with nothing to lose.
There’s no designed formula to determine the third tier candidate.
But the eagerness displayed above is the dead giveaway. The best and brightest — Tier 1s and 2s — know you can’t seem to want the presidency that much this soon.
Scott Walker lectures it’s ridiculous to focus on 2016 before the 2014 midterms (but has made a trip to Iowa and is coming to South Carolina next week.)
Bobby Jindal thinks anyone dreaming of the Oval Office this soon “needs their head examined”(but has been in Iowa and New Hampshire this summer and will complete the trifecta in the Palmetto State Monday.)
Chris Christie has a re-election race to run. Focus: New Jersey (but he’s up by 20 points and is already boasting to Republicans he’s a winner.)
Oh and Ted Cruz is solely focused on his Senate work, in between his visits to Iowa, South Carolina and Friday, to New Hampshire.
Jeb Bush has vowed not to produce a thought about it at all this year — Paul Ryan fist-bumped that notion. At least these two have stayed chaste.
Bolton, Brown, the King brothers will earn plenty of attention from those of us obsessed with 2016 — guilty as charged — see this Allen West post. There will be the “it’s possible” ruminations and laudatory quotes from early state consultants about what so-and-so “can bring to the debate.”
But third tier candidates don’t become nominees or presidents; they become talking heads, op-ed writers or analysts on cable TV. In fact, the next president is most likely on one of these two lists.
And the giveaway is the lack of the artful dodge or coy evasion.
Come to think of it, maybe we should be taking Steve King a bit more seriously.
Follow Dave’s blog at TheRun2016.com
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