< PREVIOUS ] [ 1991 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
President Bush's current 91 percent approval rating is an economic and political disaster for Colorado. All our plans to become important just got derailed by the quick victory in the Persian Gulf.
Last November we voters approved an early presidential primary for Colorado -- preferably sometime in March.
That's right after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, so there are still plenty of candidates. Further, our ski resorts are going strong this time of year, so it's easy to attract scores of national media types who have healthy expense accounts.
The idea was that anybody seeking the presidency would have to spend a couple of weeks, and a lot of money, in Colorado. The benefits of the money are obvious, and the candidate time could mean a place on the national agenda for our concerns.
A potential Leader of the Free World must appear on the TV news. So he tromps across Iowa and shakes hands with farmers in barnyards. It's photogenic.
The farmers ask questions. The candidate must have answers about parity, Australian grain exports, Japanese beef restrictions and all the other arcane of farm policy.
Nobody really cares what the answers are, but the candidate had better sound caring and knowledgeable.
He's not going to say, I don't know what parity is,
and further, I don't care. Less than 5 percent of Americans
live on farms. The only reason I trudged through your
manure pile was because my media adviser suggested it, and
I'm going to can that dimwit as soon as I can find
him.
No, he'll have a farm policy. The Iowa caucuses force presidential candidates to think about farming, just as they must know fishing in New Hampshire, cars in Michigan and cotton on Super Tuesday.
A Colorado primary was supposed to force candidates to address issues that are important in the Nowhere Zone: energy development, national park management, mineral extraction, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, immigration laws, the Bureau of Land Management, timber sales, interstate water compacts, the Bureau of Reclamation.
One of us plain folks could walk to the post office on a frosty March morning, snowy peaks glistening all around. On the sidewalk is a full campaign entourage. Over by the cameras, a reporter speaks:
Candidate Squibb stands before the Mountain City post
office, talking to voters. Here's one now. Let's zoom
in.
Chester Squibb here. What are your concerns?
What about below-cost timber sales?
I have long been a supporter of economy in
government, and these foolish subsidies must be
stopped.
That should be happening now, only a year before the first Colorado Presidential Primary.
At this time in 1987, Iowa and New Hampshire were swarming with candidates, political operatives and network television crews.
But nobody wants to run again George Bush next year. The Democrats are publicly wondering whether to bother nominating a candidate at all. There a no hustlers or bagmen out in the hustings, anywhere.
This was our first chance to be important since 1876, when Colorado's three electoral votes gave Rutherford B. Hays his winning margin, and it's not going happen.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1991 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >