COMMENTARY | The left's disappointment with President Barack Obama has been touched upon many times before. However the sticking point has always been finding someone with a high enough profile to challenge him in the Democratic primaries.
A group calling itself "Run Gary Hart" thinks it has found that man. His name is Gary Hart, the former senator from Colorado, campaign manager for George McGovern and twice candidate for president.
Leaving aside whether the former senator and star of the "monkey business" sex scandal is even willing to have another go at it, Hart makes for an interesting man of the white horse. He has intellectual pretensions going back to the 1984 campaign when he was called an "Atari Democrat" for his propensity to offer high tech babble as part of his campaign spiel. In 1987, during his second attempt, Hart was caught up in a what would now be considered a tame sex scandal involving an attractive young lady named Donna Rice and a yacht called "Monkey Business."
Since 1987, Hart has practiced law, written extensively, and has gotten a doctorate at Oxford. He was mentioned for a cabinet post in a potential John Kerry presidency. He currently has a professorship at the University of Colorado at Denver.
Hart had started his political career as a great young hope, brimming with a boatload of new but unspecified ideas. However, now in his 70s, Hart would have to approach a revival of his political career as a venerable sage.
While Hart's political approach is still decidedly left, combining a skepticism about the war on terror with a desire to have an energy policy to wean the United States off foreign oil, one wonders what he appeal would be for those disaffected liberals looking for an alternative to Obama.
It is possible that Hart has been out of the public eye for so long that he would qualify as a fresh face. An entire generation has grown up not knowing who Hart is. Were he to decide to challenge Obama, he might get a following, combining young people looking for a savior, to aging supporters from his previous campaigns who pine for what might have been.
Sources: Run Gary Hart
Gary Hart Biography, Answers.Com
