When Beto O’Rourke announced he was running for the Democratic nomination for President a few days ago, my first impulse was to roll my eyes. Here’s a guy from Texas who is most famous for losing a race for the U.S. Senate last fall to the much-despised Ted Cruz.
He made a good showing, far better than most expected, losing by less than three percent, but he still lost. Prior to that, he spent three fairly uneventful terms in the House of Representatives, and had a career in technology and local politics in his native El Paso.
In the old days, the unwritten rule was this: In order to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate for either party, you normally had to have been a governor or a senator, and usually needed to have been reelected at least once. There were rare exceptions for heroes like Dwight D. Eisenhower, who ran and coordinated armies in an international world war.
But then I heard someone say that “Beto probably isn’t ready yet, but may be nominated next time,” and remembered a famous adage I heard a long time ago:
In politics, when people start saying something is going to happen next time, that generally means it is going to happen now. I remember writing a letter to a former student in 2007, telling her that Barack Obama might be inspiring, but there was no way the Democrats would nominate a freshman senator, a black guy with a funny name, for President.
What’s more, I added, if they did that, they’d certainly lose.
So clearly, not taking Beto – everyone seems to call him Beto — seriously might be a bad move. He did raise a record $80 million for his Senate race, most from small donors. He is young, energetic, charismatic and has a speaking style faintly reminiscent of Bobby Kennedy’s.
That’s not to say he is a shoo-in, or that I have somehow decided to support his candidacy. There are now 16 declared Democratic candidates for President, including a couple that I’ve never previously heard of. But consider this:
The two front-runners, at least as of now, are Joe Biden, who hasn’t even announced yet, and Bernie Sanders, who were born in 1942 and 1941, respectively.
Beto O’Rourke was born in the fall of 1972, just as Biden was being elected to the U.S. Senate. Bernie and Biden are too old to be baby boomers, and many voters are too young to remember a time when they weren’t around.
And not to be ageist, but if either Biden or Bernie served two terms, they would be deep in their late 80s before they retired from what’s supposed to be the most stressful job in the world.
There are many other serious candidates who are in their 50s, a normal age for Presidents, and hold statewide office, including Senators Kristin Gillibrand and Kamala Harris.
There may be more yet. For the average citizen, this race hasn’t even started. But for those who care about this country and what is going on in the world, the most important thing is to find a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump on November 3rd, 2020.
Someone, that is, who also has the political skills to start repairing our democracy. Over the next few months, we should look at as many good people as we can possibly find.
