Twenty-Twelve

It's never too early to think about the next presidential election. So says me.

But it's pretty much a fact anymore. Folks start running for president in their minds like right about now, then run for president among their closest confidantes about a year from now, and then run for president publicly a year after that, if not sooner.

2012 will be here before you know it. The first quarter of 2009 is almost done, to show you. Easter beckons and I'm still thinking that I just handed out Halloween candy a few weeks ago.

So I reckon the Republicans better get someone cleaned up, pressed and dressed. Soon. Because if things don't change, Barack Obama will make the Nixon-McGovern thing look like a nailbiter.

A trip around the GOP...

Eric Cantor? The dweeb from Virginia? Please.

Bobby Jindal, the boy governor from Louisiana? Not after he channeled Mister Rogers in his rebuttal to Obama's almost-State of the Union speech last month.

Arnold Schwarzenegger? Go ahead and change the Constitution if you wish, in order to let The Governator run. Won't mean a hill of beans.

Kay Bailey Hutchison? Wouldn't be bad -- if this was 2004.

Sarah Palin, who's not a VP candidate but who played one on TV? Stop -- you're killing me!



(from top) Cantor, Palin, and Jindal: three blind mice who might run against the O-Train in '12?

OK, so who does the GOP put up against Obama in '12?

Maybe it's someone we haven't really heard of yet. Don't forget, Obama himself was barely a blip on the screen -- known only to hardcore political fans -- prior to his masterful speech at the '04 Democratic convention.

But the notion that the Republicans have a young, dynamic, presidential prospect getting seasoned in the minors is a little hard to swallow. Their convention last summer looked like a meeting of the Russian Parliament. The only blacks that I could see were...well, I didn't see any blacks. Or young people. Or women.

OK, I don't mean literally -- about the young people or the women, anyway. But almost.

So the GOP is in a box. They don't dare run another old, white guy, do they? But who's in the minors, ready for a call to The Show?

Having said that, Obama isn't going to be riding the wave of 50-60 percent approval ratings forever. I don't think. But I submit that he's got another year, just about, of honeymoon time left before the numbers dip to something more normal.

Then again, who knows? If he manages to get some significant things accomplished, then the O-Train might zoom forward, pretty much unabated.

If that happens, then whomever goes up against Obama in 2012 will simply be a sacrificial lamb -- not someone who has much of a political future. Think Walter Mondale in 1984 vs. Ronald Reagan. A conceded election, with re-grouping to be done four years hence.

No politician with any sense of self-aggrandizement will dare risk his political capital on a run against Obama, if he thinks he's likely to be mopped the floor with. You lose a close presidential election, you MIGHT be able to come back again. You get your ass kicked, you're done.

No, it's not too early to think about the 2012 presidential election. It'll be here before you know it. In the GOP's case, just like your next dentist appointment.