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Presidential Campaign's Twists Kept Us Turning

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By WILLIAM MARCH, wmarch@tampatrib.com

and BILLY HOUSE, bhouse@tampatrib.com

Published: November 3, 2008

TAMPA - Floridians on Tuesday may be the voters who settle one of the longest, most historic and downright weirdest presidential elections in history.

The state has been at the messy center since the start. It will stay there until Tuesday night - at which point, we all hope, this race will end.

"Stop saying you're glad it's almost over," insists comedian-political commentator Bill Maher. "This has been without a doubt the most interesting, unpredictable campaign season of my lifetime."

It started with a scenario guaranteed to produce a donnybrook: A president leaving office with no vice president running to succeed him, leaving both parties with all-out nomination fights.

That hadn't happened since 1928.

Then Florida decided to throw its weight around, and the long trip got really strange.

Finally, with black and female candidates in the mix, we realized we were looking at history being made.

Only two years ago, there were seven or eight "serious" Democratic contenders, up to 10 Republicans and a scarcity of obvious front-runners on either side.

Hillary Clinton was clearly poised to inherit her party's mantle, but considered divisive. Barack Obama, a Chicago-based senator known for eloquence but little else, seemed to be inspiring a small, idealistic crusade.

But the nation's first black president?

The GOP race was even more up in the air.

John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson all had support, but each was thought to have some deal-breaking weakness.

Giuliani was too New York cosmopolitan; Romney too new to social conservatism; Huckabee too lacking in gravitas; Thompson too lackadaisical; and McCain too rambunctious, inclined to buck the party on issues such as stem cells, campaign financing and judicial nominees.

The Winding Road To Florida

In Florida, it started with a primary that almost didn't count.

State lawmakers had decided we were going to be the deciders, moving up our primary into January to have more influence on the outcome. But that broke the national parties' rules.

Florida remained ground zero in the GOP primary fight. But the Democratic candidates all agreed to boycott the Florida primary, and the national party said it wouldn't count.

While we waited to cast our primary votes, wondering whether they would matter, a lot of unexpected and uncharted territory got covered:

•In Iowa, one of the nation's whitest, most rural states, a black man won the Democratic caucuses and an Arkansas preacher/politician won the Republican caucuses. We did a nationwide double-take and asked, "Who are these guys?"

• After McCain's campaign imploded with poor financial management, he disappeared into New Hampshire, and emerged Phoenix-like as the Republican front-runner.

• As she campaigned in New Hampshire after her Iowa loss, Clinton wept on TV. She wasn't just a hard-edged machine in pantsuits, but a real person. She won New Hampshire, and the Democratic race to Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, was on - with Florida as a speed-bump.

• Giuliani made a finely calculated decision that turned out completely wrong. Looking at McCain's heels, he thought he could regain the lead in the sixth borough of New York City, Florida. He all but moved here, as so many New Yorkers had done before.

But Gov. Charlie Crist, ever watchful of polls that showed McCain edging ahead, decided on the eve of the Florida primary to endorse him.

McCain coasted from his Florida win to the nomination, while Clinton and Obama scratched and clawed almost until the August convention.

Of Celebrities And Joe The Plumber

As they fought, Obama increasingly sought to take on the air of a worldwide figure - a man who could alter the centuries-old calculus of black exclusion in the world's most powerful nation.

He gave a July speech in Berlin. But his speech before an unprecedented, stadium-filling crowd in Denver capped a Democratic nominating convention that gave him a major bump in the polls.

McCain, the exciting outsider during his 2000 race, was in danger of seeming boring and irrelevant in this one, reduced to grousing about Obama's celebrity status.

Hoping to add some demographic zing to his own ticket and to capitalize on the resentment of Clinton supporters, he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. She revived the party's evangelical base and pumped in new energy.

But it came at a cost. Her inexperience quickly showed in the few interviews she did, and even Republicans questioned her qualifications.

Then came the campaign's defining event, the Wall Street collapse.

Obama continued to press his case as the agent of change, sought to project an air of calm leadership, and intensified his economic populism.

McCain sought to show urgency by suspending his campaign, and with the race focused on the economy, fell back on the most reliable weapon in the GOP arsenal, anti-tax rhetoric.

Suddenly the race was about Joe the Plumber, whom Obama had told he wanted to "spread the wealth around," which McCain calls "socialism."

But it's also about Florida's 27 electoral votes. The candidates and their supporters have swarmed the state and worn down the asphalt on the Interstate 4 corridor, finishing - maybe - with McCain's appearance in Tampa today.

If Obama wins Florida, he's president. If McCain wins it, he must also win several other closely contested battleground states.

On Tuesday, you decide.

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