According to the press who cover politics, last week was a real good one for Rudy Giuliani. He increased his big lead in the Republican Presidential opinion polls. It was also good for Hillary Clinton who kept her lead in the Democratic polls and for Barack Obama who now leads Clinton among African-American voters.
Of course, if I was writing this before Room 8 was invented, I could have written that it was a good week for Nelson Rockefeller in 1963, George Romney in 1967, Edmund Muskie in 1971, George Wallace in 1975, Gary Hart in 1987, Mario Cuomo in 1991, and Joe Lieberman in 2003. All of those losing candidates were leading in the national polls at a similar time to this those years.
Last week was also a good one in the press for Mitt Romney who won the crucial Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll poll.
But similarly, if I had a blog before there were blogs, I might have written about the good week in 1983 when Alan Cranston won the Wisconsin Democratic straw poll or 1987 when Pat Robertson won the Iowa Republican poll, or 1995 when Phil Gramm won the Maine GOP poll or 1999 when Gary Bauer won the CPAC one.
All this press coverage almost a year before the first Primary over a year and a half before Election Day reminds me of nothing so much as something else happening right now – spring training in baseball.
If spring training was reported on like presidential politics, we’d be wondering if anyone could stop the Cincinnati Reds who are 6-0 and do the Mets at 3-4 have enough in them to overcome the Atlanta Braves who are 5-1.
And last year at the end of spring training we'd be wondering about who would start in the playoffs for the American League team that had the best record in the spring – the Kansas City Royals!
In fact, some sportswriters do cover spring training as badly as political writers. Here’s what the Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rogers wrote after a player’s FIRST at bat this year:
Witness his first at-bat in a Sox uniform during an intrasquad game—going down to rip a Jose Contreras fastball onto the warning track in left-center and then steaming around second base and into third when Pablo Ozuna mishandled the hop off the chain-link fence. He hardly looked like a veteran on his last legs.
"That's the way he always has played," manager Ozzie Guillen said about Erstad's all-out approach on the back field. "That's the type of player we want, we need."
This is obviously nuts but not crazier than some pundits who are already speculating that John McCain is dropping out because Rudy is ahead of him in the new polls.
I’m not saying we should ignore anything written about the 2008 election or that a baseball fan should not pay attention until April 1. Sometimes a candidate leads in a poll 2 years before an election and wins easily and sometimes a straw poll may really mean something. And as a 19 year old in spring training Dwight Gooden already showed the talent that showed he was ready to be a major league pitcher.
But as often as stuff this early means something, just as often it doesn’t. We’ve all seen early favorites in politics and spring training sensations ending up in the minor leagues. It’s too bad that many political and sports reporters tend to forget that.