Thinning the Herd: Tommy Thompson, We Hardly Knew Ya!

The first non-event event of the presidential nominating season is over. The Iowa Straw Poll, a thinly veiled Iowa Republican party fundraiser masquerading as an election, has gone to the man who bought the most votes, mulit-millionaire Mitt Romney. He is now considered the top candidate among the lower tier of candidates, the most formidable of the future also-rans. He must be very proud. For every $35 ticket he purchased for the masses to attend the straw poll and cast a vote for him, he received at least ten times the return in free national press. Maybe the White House is for sale.

The worst news coming out of this poll is that Tommy Thompson, former two-term governor of Wisconsin, former Secretary of HHS, and godfather of welfare-to-work, is reportedly ready to fold his campaign. This is not bad news because the country will miss out on his extraordinary leadership qualities and his charismatic speaking style. We won't. It is bad news because the field for New Hampshire is getting smaller. Marra and I want to see LOTS of candidates, and every candidate who drops out makes each October campaign event a tougher ticket for us. Of course, Tommy Thompson wasn't going to draw half of McCain's crowd from a Manchester town hall meeting, but someone would attend. Now that someone will be in OUR way, as we jockey for a good seat close to the stage. People were bound to quit eventually, but we were hoping it would happen after our trip, not before.

T. Thompson isn't the first to fall. Several fell out of contention before the election season even got going. Bill Frist chickened out last year. George Allen got "macaca-ed". Tom Vilsack of Iowa practically announced and withdrew the same day. Evan Bayh and Russ Feingold decided to wait for a veep phone call rather than raise money for 2 years in a losing effort. George Pataki? That guy dropped off the map completely. All were contenders according to the pundits. Now they are all pretenders in the history books. When the story of the 2008 election is written, these names barely make the prologue.

Perhaps things will turn in our favor, and the field will expand before October 13th. Fred Thompson could replace Tommy Thompson. Newt Gingrich could bring his kinder, gentler professorial style to the race. Who knows? Maybe the Bloomburg-Hagel independent ticket will begin its exploratory committee work in time for our trip. Now that would be fun. One can always hope.

JS