The View From Here . . .

By Bob Morgan, Jr.

With many months left to go before the primaries, much less the general election, most of the major candidates for President have already hit a bump or two in the road.

On the Democratic side, Senator Barak Obama has generally run an impressive race and a recent Rasmussen poll had him tied with Hillary Clinton. But his candidacy was not helped by his remarks about the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech.

In discussing the slaughter in Blacksburg, the senator declared that "there's also another kind of violence that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways" and then went on to discuss such things as the "verbal violence" of Don Imus, the violence of people losing their jobs through outsourcing and the "violence of children whose voices are not heard in communities that are ignored."

This type of comparison is extremely problematic since it apparently equates an almost unspeakable tragedy with issues of far lesser station. Don Imus may be something of a buffoon, but the damage caused by his offensive statements is not even remotely similar to that inflicted by Seung-Hui Cho. The loss of jobs through outsourcing may create sadness and disruption (even while globalization brings considerable benefits to the economy), but this dislocation is not comparable to the losses suffered by families at Virginia Tech.

Meanwhile, the Hillary Clinton campaign in some ways seems to be going into reverse. Even more than being caught by Senator Obama in the Rasmussen survey, her advisers must be troubled a Gallup poll released this month. In the survey, 52% of respondents had an unfavorable view of Ms. Clinton, compared to 45% favorable. This was a sharp decline from a 58% favorable rating in February and was far inferior to the favorable/unfavorable ratings of other leading contenders, Democratic and Republican. Another sign of potential trouble for Ms. Clinton, as reported by The New York Times this week, is that her support among black officials is not as great as she once anticipated.

There are issues with the Republican candidates as well. Rudolph Giuliani, the current GOP frontrunner, made a pretty obvious misstep recently on the abortion issue. Although he previously has attempted to finesse the issue by speaking of nominating "strict constructionist" judges while favoring Roe v. Wade, Mr. Giuliani managed to exacerbate his problem with pro-life voters by coming out for public funding of abortion, something which is not required by Supreme Court precedent. This issue could easily come back to haunt him among conservative voters in next year's primaries.

As for John McCain, he has gained some support recently among traditional Republicans with his stalwart defense of the President's policies in Iraq. It remains to be seen, however, if his off the cuff singing of "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to a Beachboys' song will add to his stature as a potential president.

Mitt Romney has been pretty impressive in his fundraising abilities, but he has had some concerns of his own, even going beyond explaining his sudden conversion to conservative positions on social issues. While claiming he was a "lifelong hunter" to woo Second Amendment advocates, it turned out that he had exactly two hunting experiences -- once when he was 15 and again at age 59.

All candidates, even winning ones, have to overcome some bad moments in the campaign. It will be interesting to see who can get past adversity and who will be overwhelmed by it.