There are moments, from time to time, when one can put a finger on a single moment in which a political campaign - or even a political career - ended. I remember the first time I saw it happen, almost twenty years ago now. During the 2004 Democrat Presidential primaries, Vermont Governor Howard Dean was riding pretty tall in the saddle. He wasn't in the lead, but he was definitely in the running.
Then this happened.
Wags dubbed this the Howard Dean "I Have A Scream" speech. Rush Limbaugh played the clip joyously, over and over, a host of internet gag videos and memes surfaced, and at that moment, Howard Dean's Presidential ambitions imploded. I remember seeing that outburst on television and turning to my wife and saying, "See that? You just saw a political career end."
Where is Howard Dean these days, anyway? Who knows? (That, of course, is kind of the point.)
One of the more fun things about being a political info junkie is noting and remembering those moments.
Here's another one: In 1987, Colorado Senator Gary Hart had just announced a run for the Democratic Presidential nomination. He invited reporters to look deeply into his background and activities:
On May 3, 1987, the New York Times Magazine printed Hart’s famous challenge that reporters used to justify their intense pursuit of his personal life: “Follow me around. I’m serious. If anyone wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.”
Hart was a popular Senator in Colorado and may well have been a serious contender for the Democrats' 1988 nomination. Unfortunately for Senator Hart, the experiences of the press he invited to follow him around were anything but boring; they discovered that the married Hart was himself looking deeply into a woman, one Donna Rice, who wasn't his wife. Rice was photographed entering Hart's townhome on a Friday and not leaving until Saturday evening, and later photos surfaced of the happy, philandering couple on a private yacht named, of all things, Monkey Business.
On May 25, a photo of Donna Rice seated on Hart’s lap aboard a chartered yacht named the Monkey Business was emblazoned across the cover of the National Enquirer beneath a headline reading, “Gary Hart Asked Me to Marry Him.” The photo further humiliated Hart and his supporters. He responded by writing a letter of apology to his backers, a letter significantly more subdued than his angry departure speech.
And, yes, that departure speech was pretty angry:
Whoops. Some old saying about glass houses comes to mind. Gary Hart is still around, still doing appointed governmental odd jobs, but the Monkey Business handle will follow him around for the rest of his days.
And, of course, we all remember Liz Cheney. (We do remember Liz Cheney, right?) She was ostensibly a Republican but made denying President Trump a second term a personal mission, and even served as one of Nancy Pelosi's tame Republicans on the second Trump impeachment hearings, in which she cast her vote to impeach the former President. While a process rather than a single moment, this nevertheless did not sit well with Liz Cheney's constituents in Wyoming. She faced a primary challenge from Trump-backed attorney Harriet Hageman, in which Cheney was decidedly trounced — by 66 percent to 29 percent.
She's now making noises about running for the Presidency, but her odds of winning that contest are, candidly, about the same as my odds of spontaneously sprouting wings and flying to Neptune.
And we mustn't forget this gem from the Dowager-Empress of Chappaqua, Hillary I:
One could argue that this only sank Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, not necessarily her career, even though that career seems to have dead-ended in 2016. Oh, she tried to dial it back; much good it did her. It's plain to see that this was one of the worst moments in one of the worst-run Presidential campaigns and one of the least likable candidates in American history; it didn't just alienate and energize the half of Trump supporters she referred to (which half would that be?), but instead, all of them, and it surely contributed to her 2016 defeat. This was an event that comprised one of the biggest, most destructive bullets that the American nation has ever dodged.
Politics is a tricky business. It's a petty, nasty business. The players play for keeps. A gaffe, an outburst, or an indiscretion will be seized on by the opposition and can end a political career at a stroke. But those people chose that life knowing that; they could hardly not know this, with the legions of examples. So it's hard to feel sorry for them when they step on their various protruding body parts, and it is indeed more than a little amusing.
