Pecking order emerging for '08 hopefuls

WASHINGTON -- The screams from the crowd at this weekend's Democratic National Committee convention were so boisterous that they often drowned out the words being spoken by Barack Obama , John Edwards, and Hillary Rodham Clinton .

Not so for Wesley Clark, retired general, and US Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, presidential aspirants whose speeches were met with bored conversation punctuated by schoolmarmish shushes from a few audience members.

And Senator Chris Dodd, a Connecticut lawmaker who has spent more than three decades in Congress, got only a polite listen -- a fact he seemed to anticipate early in his speech.

"I stand before you to ask you to give me a chance, a chance to be heard," Dodd said.

Dodd, perhaps, needn't have bothered. For while the Democrats gathered for their first national meeting since taking control of Congress in November, there were only three names that mattered: Obama, Clinton, and Edwards.

All three arrived with packs of T-shirted supporters and campaign paraphernalia more typical of a general election campaign than an early-season event.

A similar pecking order is emerging on the Republican side as party leaders trumpet the big names such as John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, and Mitt Romney -- while long shots such as Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, and US Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado hover at the edges of party events, far from the dais, trying to be heard.

Some analysts close to both parties say insiders are eager to winnow the field early, so as to concentrate on grooming a winning team for 2008.

But party officials, especially those in New Hampshire, which prides itself on giving any candidate a chance to compete, worry that the dismissal of so-called second-tier candidates is bad for the process and bad for both parties.

"It's crazy right now. It's insane. It started way too early, and it started way too big," said Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic State Committee. "People are talking about horse-race stuff right now, and it's way too early to be doing that. We should be talking about issues, and we're not."

Clinton, the US senator from New York, who announced her presidential exploratory committee just two weeks ago, has been flooding e-mail boxes with press releases on how well she is doing in various opinion polls or who has signed onto her campaign, instead of with blueprints for how to address health care or economic development.

Edwards's campaign sent an e-mail last week to supporters of the former senator from North Carolina, urging them to show up en masse at the DNC meeting to help keep the buzz alive.

And Obama, the US senator from Illinois, all but acknowledged that the appearance of early support has become more important than a discussion of what the candidates would actually do as president.

"Sometimes you feel like you're part of a reality TV show -- you feel like this is 'American Idol' or 'Survivor,' and you're either going to go to Hollywood or be voted off the island. This is not a game. It's a serious matter for America," Obama said Friday.

Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico exhorted the smaller Saturday crowd to stay open-minded about the race. "I say to you today, stay loose," he said. "We've got a year to go."

Republicans, too, have gotten into the early endorsement game. Romney sends out almost daily announcements of members of Congress who have pledged support -- a dig at Senators McCain and Sam Brownback , Republican of Kansas, some of whose colleagues have decided to go with the Massachusetts governor instead of with a fellow lawmaker . McCain recently shot back with names of his well-known supporters, including social conservatives whom Romney is seeking to claim.

Media coverage has confirmed the notion that the field has narrowed to just three contenders in each party.

Clinton and Obama's Internet announcements that they were looking at the presidency were given front-page coverage, while similar decisions by Brownback, who announced the same day as Clinton, and Richardson, who made his intentions known the day after Clinton, got inside-page treatment in most news outlets, including The Globe.

Richardson's recent trip to New Hampshire to woo voters received modest attention, while Obama's first visit attracted so much media interest -- including from German television -- that organizers had to limit the number of press passes. Clinton's decision to cancel a trip to New Hampshire over the weekend because of a family illness became a news story in itself.

Now, academia is following suit.

Harvard's Institute of Politics will host two seminars in March on presidential campaigns -- the first with key staff people from the McCain, Giuliani, and Romney campaigns, and the second with representatives of the Obama, Clinton, and Edwards campaigns.

The institute said it was organizing future discussion panels with representatives of the other campaigns. "We do acknowledge that those are the campaigns that the national press has labeled as top-tier, so we started with them," said Jeanne Shaheen , director of the institute and a former Democratic governor of New Hampshire.

The more famous candidates also ended up with prime speaking time at the DNC meeting; Obama, Edwards, and Clinton scored a Friday appearance, leaving their weekend free for home visits and campaigning, while US Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Richardson, former governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa, and former senator Mike Gravel of Alaska were scheduled to speak at Saturday's less-attended morning session.

DNC chairman Howard Dean said the order of speakers was determined by lottery, but the result had the effect of suggesting the existence of an A team and a B team.

Both Shaheen and Sullivan noted that history has not always rewarded the early front-runners.

At a similar point in the 2004 campaign, few insiders viewed Dean, then an obscure former governor of a small state, as a major contender, but he dominated the race for many months.

Gary Hart a former US senator from Colorado, was dismissed in late 1983 as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination, Shaheen noted, but ended up winning the New Hampshire primary in 1984.

"It's all horse-race stuff," Sullivan complained of the current campaign. "How can you have a horse race when the horses haven't even left the paddock?"

Jon Ralston , an independent political analyst in Nevada, which has moved up its nominating contest, said that the hype was largely contained to party operatives, and that an underdog candidate could still emerge and do well.

"The fact is that 95 or 98 percent of the American public is not paying attention right now," Ralston said. "At this point, it's just noise. It's just meant to create this aura that there's really only a couple of candidates worth watching."