``We just don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives when they're happening. Back then I thought, well! there will be other days. I didn't realize that...that was the only day.’’
-Dr. Archibald 'Moonlight' Graham ''-Field of Dreams''
AP
When the burly Chris Christie announced Tuesday in front of a packed news conference in Trenton of his decision not to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012, because ``now is not my time’’, many agreed with his decision, reasoning the New Jersey governor, only 49, and his star still rising within the GOP- is like a bottle of fine wine-that still needs additional fermenting, before his quest for the presidency becomes a reality.
But what if his time never comes again? What if 2012 turns out to have been Christie’s only real shot at the top prize, but he passed it up—and years later comes to regret it.?
Life, after all, is filled with regrets and missed opportunities of the times when we should have taken our opportunity when it presented itself-but passed it up because we thought the time wasn’t quite right; whether it was a marriage proposal, a lucrative job offer, seeking out a long lost relative, offering our apology for a past misdeed or going on that dream vacation that never did materialize.
So too is history filled with regrets by characters who missed golden opportunities. The combustible Ty Cobb once said that if he had to do it all over again,`` I would have had more friends’’, while Ted Williams would probably had doffed his cap during his final game at Fenway Park when fans stood for several minutes chanting ``We Want Ted!’’ Actress Bette Davis, meanwhile, turned down the role of Scarlet O’Hara in ``Gone with the Wind’’; and Burt Ward who played Robin on the popular television series ``Batman’’ (1966-1968) was pursued by director Mike Nichols to play the role of Benjamin Braddock in the Graduate (a role that changed Dustin Hoffman’s life forever), but Ward opted instead to renew his contract with the television series and was soon never heard from again.
Soon after delivering a powerful mesmerizing keynote address at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, New York Governor Mario Cuomo catapulted to rock star status as he was quickly hounded by party regulars and supporters to throw his hat in the ring and abandon Albany for Washington D.C.
Christie indicated in his press conference there is still too much unfinished business to attend to in New Jersey; and so it would be unfair to his constituents to walk away after just 20 months in office.
Similarly, Mr. Cuomo decided to stay in Albany and dismissed all suggestions of pursuing the presidency when he told Joe Klein of New York Magazine in 1987: ``I'd wake up in the morning thinking about Dubuque instead of Albany. ``I couldn't run for president’’, Cuomo explained, `` with one hand and running with the state with the other.''
Whether Mr. Cuomo came to regret the decision not to pursue the presidency when his popularity was at its highest point-is just a matter of conjecture. The former New York governor once said that `` I have no regrets about anything that's happened in my life. If anything, I've gotten a good deal more than I deserved and I'm working very hard to come to as close as I can to deserving it.''
Still, you wonder how much time Mr. Cuomo reflects on those exhilarating days of the 1980’s when he was one of the most sought after politicians in the country, a popularity he was never able to recapture as the years wore on and especially after he was denied a fourth term as governor in losing to George Pataki in 1994.
But arguably one of the most star-crossed examples of a political figure wasting a golden opportunity was Hillary Clinton who chose not to seek the Democratic nomination in 2004.
After winning the U.S. Senate race in 2000, Clinton quickly earned her stripes by serving on the Armed Service Committee, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and voting against two major tax cuts proposed by the Bush Administration. In 2003, she released a 562-page autobiography, ``Living History’’ about her years in the White House as First Lady and dealing with the embarrassment of her husband’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky. The book set first week sales for a non-fiction work and went on to sell more than one million copies in the first year of its release.
In their book, `` Game Change’’ political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin document just how close Mrs. Clinton came to seeking the Democratic nomination in 2004. The author’s point out Steve Ricchetti , who served as Bill Clinton’s deputy White House chief of staff, told Mrs. Clinton she was facing a ``Bobby Kennedy moment’’ with an unpopular war and a divided electorate and that the time was ripe given her popularity to announce her candidacy. So serious was Clinton that she even held a closed door sit down meeting with her husband, her daughter Chelsea, former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, former deputy chief of staff at the White House, Evelyn Lieberman, and Cheryl Mills, who defended Mr. Clinton during his impeachment trial. She polled them all on whether she should run. The sole dissenter was her daughter Chelsea who advised her to finish her Senate term otherwise voters would never forgive her.
In the end, Mrs. Clinton listened to her daughter despite all the those who urged her to run; because as she told Solis Dolis, ``I’d be crucified’’ by the media if she abandoned the Senate.
Little did Mrs. Clinton know that a new upstart in the Senate; a rising star in the Democratic party, Barack Hussein Obama would attract a new legion of followers when he delivered a spellbinding keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston. Ever since that speech, the junior senator from Illinois’s popularity grew to a fevered pitch, so that by the time the primary season of 2006 and 2007 was in full bloom-Hillary’s once rock solid base was beginning to fragment and her narrative of becoming the first female U.S. president was being overshadowed by a more compelling narrative; that of the first African-American president.
One can’t help but wonder just how much that tete-e-tete that Mrs. Clinton conducted with senior advisors and her husband and daughter before deciding not to run in 2004, still haunts her to this day.
Mr. Christie is more or less banking that President Obama will be re-elected, which will then open the electorate up to his fresh ideas in 2016.
But if Obama is as beatable as some predict and his soundly defeated by a Mitt Romney, Christie may have to wait until 2020 to make a lunge for the presidency; and by then it is conceivable that he might be damage goods, depending, of course, on his legislative track record with New Jersey voters in a battered economy.
It’s too soon to tell if Christie will come to regret his decision not to seek the presidency; but for his sake I hope he doesn’t one day many many years from now come to repeat the memorable line spoken by Dr. Archibald 'Moonlight' Graham '' in the motion picture Field of Dreams: `` Back then I thought, well! there will be other days. I didn't realize that...that was the only day.’’
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
October 6, 2011
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