Fire, Ice, Lukewarm Water

Fire, Ice, Lukewarm Water

The meme of the night in the Iowa Dem blogosphere is the candidate thermometer. OK. I'll play. Here's how I'm feeling 13 months out.

	Fire (these go to eleven) John Edwards Russ Feingold Barack Obama Bill Richardson
	Lukewarm Water (Are we gonna play "Stonehenge" tonight?) Evan Bayh Hillary Clinton Chris Dodd Tom Vilsack Mark Warner
	Ice (I'm sure I'd be feeling much worser if I wasn't under such heavy sedation) Joe Biden Wesley Clark Tom Daschle John Kerry Dennis Kucinich
	Even Global Warming Can't Thaw This (maybe if they did it in Dubbly) Al Gore

Drummers indicate non-candidates who have spontaneously combusted.

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Yes just when you though it was safe, the last guy to get the clue in 2004 is back:

"There is much speculation and rumors about my plans for 2008. Shortly, I will make my intentions known, " said Kucinich. In the meantime, I am going to continue to challenge the Administration and Congress to cut off the funds for the war, bring all our troops home and end the grave misadventure in Iraq."

So when is "shortly," anyway?

"Shortly is shortly," says Kucinich spokesman Doug Gordon.

If I were working for Dennis Kucinich I'd be really careful about the word "short."

I'm probably going to make some people mad, but Dennis Kucinich just always really irritated me. Some of it was superficial: the Natural Law Party logo, the second worst toupee in Ohio politics... (It was really really bad hair, but Dennis has the bad luck of coming from the same state as the all time bad hair champ James Traficant.) And there were little things like campaigning for a win in Hawaii after Kerry had the nomination mathematically clinched. Getting the message out - or stroking the ego? True, anyone running for office has to have a little more ego than average, but Dennis always seemed like he went back for seconds in that department.

For some offices a perfect platform, or having the loudest version of the perfect platform, is enough. But the presidency is different. It's about the message AND the messenger. You need to inspire. Obama and Edwards inspire me. Howard Dean inspired me. Even Bill Clinton, in the heady days of `92, inspired me. My dream is inspiration AND the perfect platform. But Paul Wellstone died. And Dennis Kucinich's position papers and demanding style were no substitute. There's a difference between righteousness and self-righteousness.