By Erik Gable, a columnist with the Adrian Daily Telegram in Michigan:
Tom Vilsack announced his candidacy for president of the United States on Thursday, prompting bloggers everywhere to ask: “Tom who?”
But Vilsack, the two-term governor of Iowa, wouldn’t be the first person to go from relative obscurity to the White House in the course of a few years. Just ask Jimmy Carter, who spent some time as “Jimmy Who?” before his 1976 campaign’s improbable success made him the nation’s 39th president.
Vilsack may not be well-known, but he’s no lightweight. And although Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the big celebrities in the 2008 presidential field, Vilsack might just leave them in the dust.
Orphaned at birth and raised the son of a real estate agent and a homemaker in Pennsylvania, Vilsack has the kind of classic American success story that offers a welcome contrast to the last two presidential elections, both of which were fought between a pair of upper-class twits.
Read the whole thing.
Gable makes some really good points here, but Democrats will have a hard time winning the White House without winning the South. Don't forget that all three Democrats to be elected to the White House in the past 42 years came from Southern states.
Meanwhile, as of this morning:
Participating Saturday morning in his last governor's pheasant hunt, Vilsack filled the sky with lead, most of which landed harmlessly in a sea of Conservation Reserve Program grass near this northern Linn County town.
After one particularly painful miss, in which the governor fired both barrels of his Stevens side-by-side at a straight-away flying rooster, Vilsack bent over at the waist in a gesture of frustration and disappointment.
``Why don't I just give up?'' he said.
Vilsack's two shots were part of a futile fusillade that prompted guide Steve Ries of rural Central City to exclaim: ``This gives a whole new meaning to the concept of wildlife conservation.''
As I said earlier this week, Vilsack's used to uphill battles.
0 comments:
Post a Comment