The new Comback Kid?

In late January, 1992, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign appeared to be over. His personal life had become  public scandal, and the experts in Washington, DC were saying he was kaput.

At about that time, I ran into one of the senior titans of the national Democratic Party who knew I had predicted two years earlier that Clinton would be the Democratic nominee, and he assured me that Clinton was finished. I told him he could not be more wrong.

Today, 23 years later, there is general consensus among the media and political experts that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has no chance to win. Their absolute certainty was shaken a bit after Mr. Christie’s strong performance in the second GOP debate at the Reagan Library, but the consensus remains.

Look at the polls, they say. Christie is at 1% in Iowa, virtually at the bottom of the competing pack in this first electoral event of 2016.

Overall, his numbers improved slightly nationally after the Reagan Library, but he’s still near or at the bottom of the top ten. Look at his negatives, the experts say. Remember the bridge “scandal,” they add, as if to make disputing them pointless.

But what do they say when six of the top Republican figures in  Iowa, including close allies of the longest-serving governor in the nation, Terry Branstad, have just endorsed him?

What do they say when figures such as Rick Perry and Scott Walker (the latter only weeks ago leading the pack in Iowa) withdraw so early from the contest, leaving fewer sitting and former governors in the race?

This is not to say that Governor Christie will be the Republican nominee. But with large numbers of delegates to be counted from eastern and northeastern states, the goodwill and alliances he made while campaigning for fellow governors (when he was Republican Governors Association chair) in 2014, his demonstrated fundraising ability, and, most of all, his exceptional communications skills, it seems ludicrous to suggest he cannot yet re-emerge in this contest.

In the 1992 New Hampshire primary, Bill Clinton only came in second. He then declared himself the “comeback kid.” He apparently did not believe the negative pronouncements of his  party establishment, his party expert consultants, and the media.

We all know what happened next.

Barry Casselman has been covering national politics since 1972. Further commentaries can be found at www.barrycasselman.com.