Could college tuition make 25-candidate campaign instead nothing more than a Warren/Sanders brawl?

We’re up to 25 people with delusions that they’re the one capable of running for president as the Democratic Party’s nominee, with most would-be voters dreaming that everybody else is going to come to their senses and drop out – rather than run against their preferred candidate.

SANDERS: Writing off student loans

But just will be the factor that causes many of these political dreamers to “give it up” to take the advice of comedian Samantha Bee and run instead for the U.S. Senate – instead of for the post that offers up a mansion and private airplane as being amongst its perks?

A PART OF me wonders if Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – the senators from Vermont and Massachusetts, respectively – have latched onto the idea that will sway would-be Democratic voters into making this a two-way campaign between them.

While pushing everybody else off to the political sidelines.

For Sanders and Warren are the two who have tried most to make an issue out of a college education becoming more affordable.

Warren has talked about tuition being free at public colleges. While Sanders is now going further in talking about wanting to erase the debt that students incurred in taking out the loans that helped pay their tuition bills.

HIS LINE OF logic is that it benefits no one – and actually defeats the purpose of a better-educated society – if students are perpetually in debt upon graduation.

WARREN: Tuition-free public education?

Writing off all those unpaid loan bills would benefit the students, and actually result in less time being wasted by entities that are trying to collect debts from people who, realistically, can’t afford it.

Personally, I’m not swayed by the idea – largely because I remember back some three decades ago when I was a freshly-graduated university-type scholar.

I managed to repay my loans in full – even though I also made what I’m sure some (such as my father) would regard as the asinine decision to want to be a newspaper reporter. Not exactly the highest-paid of professions we have in our society. 

FURTHERMORE, I SPENT those early-reporter years with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago – a place that actually took a certain amount of pride in the low wages they paid (my memory recalls starting at $190 a week – which dropped down to $156 weekly once taxes were deducted).

O'ROURKE: Can we write-off Beto yet?

Yes, if I hadn’t had to make that monthly loan payment, I’d have had a few extra bucks. But I did make it. And also have to admit it helped that at exactly the point in time I was finished off with the loans – my future employer gave me a significant pay boost.

Which became the point in time when I could start living a more-adult lifestyle. Maybe I could have had a financially-easier time of it had I made other choices, but those were choices I made -- and I paid the cost, without expecting a financial write-off someday.

Now part of the problem, as I comprehend it, is that college costs are significantly-higher now than they were back in the Age of Reagan. When I look at the costs of college that exist now, I wonder if it would be possible to borrow so much money to afford the tab.

BUT A LARGER part of the problem lies in part with those students who, for whatever reason, wind up not completing college – but took out loans to pay for the years they attended.

BEE: Run for Senate, instead

They’re whacked with significant debt without the potential future earnings that a degree would offer them. Note I said “potential.” There’s no guarantee – as it’s usually only the most promising of students who actually wind up employed to the standard of their dreams.

So I expect Sanders will encounter some opposition from those who think “we paid off our loans, let the deadbeats do theirs.” But there also will be others who will think the theory of “free college” outweighs all others, and will be more than willing to ignore all other would-be presidential candidates just because of it.

So maybe it’s beneficial that the number of presidential dreamers on the Democratic side be reduced. Although I can’t help but be dismayed at the notion that it could be something as trivial as this that causes the ranks to be reduced to a more-comprehendible number.

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No Romney for president in ’16; may we dump all the other recycled dreams?

Call me relieved to learn Friday that Mitt Romney has no intention of actually running for the Republican nomination for president in the 2016 election cycle.

Now if we could only get all the other past presidential candidates to give up their fantasies of working in the Oval Office someday and focus attention on trying to find someone new and forward thinking, then perhaps there’s a chance that Election ’16 won’t turn out to be a complete dud.

THAT ACTUALLY IS the sense I’m picking up at this admittedly early juncture about the people who want to succeed Barack Obama when he leaves the White House in early 2017.

A batch of rejects whom we didn’t think much of before, but who seem to have nothing better to do with themselves than make another bid for the highest office.

Apparently, it didn’t register with them when we, the people who make up the electorate, told them “No!!!!!” before.

They seem to think that if we see them once again, we’ll somehow think they’re more qualified than when they ran before.

WHEN REALLY, THESE repeat candidates remind me of the debate that often takes place when reviewing former professional ballplayers year after year after year for possible inclusion in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The player’s statistics don’t somehow magically improve in his athletic retirement. He’s no more qualified for Hall of Fame admission 20 years after he retires than he was when he was first eligible five years after retiring.

So when I look at polls with names such as “Huckabee,” “Paul,” “Perry” and “Santorum” on the Republican side, I think the same thing I felt for the possibility of a Romney campaign.

“You lost!” and “Get on with your life.” There’s nothing new about any of you that the public at-large didn’t previously dismiss. Your perennial presidential aspirations have become about as pathetic as the fifteen years that one-time Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins pitcher Jack Morris kept cropping up on the Hall of Fame ballot – only to fall short every single time!

I DON’T THINK much higher of the possible campaigns of the governors of New Jersey, Louisiana and Wisconsin – all of whom have hinted they might prefer D.C. to their respective Statehouse scenes.

But at least they’d be fresh faces of people to consider for the Republican nomination for president. So I really don’t want to hear anything about one-time Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin either!

Before any of you try to dismiss this as the rant of someone who just isn’t interested in Republicans, I have to admit to feeling something similar for the possibility of Hillary R. Clinton as president.

For what it’s worth, she had her serious bid for the White House in 2008, and she fell short. She came oh so close, but failed to win the Democratic nomination. Do we really need a repeat?

ALTHOUGH I WONDER if from the perspective of developing a political legacy, she achieved more in a career that saw her serve as a senator from New York and as secretary of state than she would have had if she had become president.

After all, she wound up gaining some respect for her performance in those roles, whereas if she had become president she merely would have become the target for all the ideological buffoons who hated her husband as president and would have been determined to “take her down” too.

Having to speculate about whether Hillary will run again for president is merely a reminder that the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to have anyone else with enough ambition to want the top post in federal government.

Particularly since the one candidate whom some Dems are eager to see challenge Hillary in a primary (Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.) has already hinted she’s probably not interested in doing so.

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We’re looking for leadership. Will anyone rise to presidential challenge?

This past weekend, I stumbled across a question posted by a Facebook “friend” asking people who they would choose for president – IF the choice is a matter of Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., or Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Personally, I said I would sooner lead a write-in campaign for the “friend,” who is a former competitor from my days as a Springfield reporter-type person.

BECAUSE THE IDEA of an Indianapolis-based radio personality as president makes about as much sense as any of the other scenarios being pitched out to the public.

For I don’t have a clue as to who will wind up actually running for president in the 2016 election cycle to replace Barack Obama. There isn’t anybody coming forth who is going to capture the spirit and emotions of the public (at least the portion that isn’t ideologically-inclined to still view Obama as some sort of “socialist”).

Former first lady, senator from New York and secretary of state Hillary R. Clinton has been lingering for so long as the presumptive presidential candidate for the Democratic Party that I can’t help but think most people are sick and tired of hearing about her possible campaign.

Did she do herself in by waiting so long to state her intentions that nobody cares anymore what she does?

WHAT MAKES THIS particular election cycle for president intriguing is not just that Chicago will lose its personal tie to the White House, it is that Vice President Joe Biden isn’t the automatic choice of Democrats to succeed Obama.

I expect Biden will run for the post. But can he win? Would anybody get excited at the thought of a President Biden? Or would he create the kind of electoral excitement amongst would-be Democratic voters that led to the overwhelming Republican victories in this year’s election cycle. A Monmouth University poll shows Biden with only 2 percent support (compared to 48 percent for Hillary).

On the Republican side, I have heard the names of “Jeb Bush,” “Haley Barbour,” “Newt Gingrich,” “Bobby Jindal,” “Rick Perry” and “Marco Rubio,” along with former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels – who might well attract the attention of what’s left of the Illinois Republican establishment, which often acts as though it wishes they could be Hoosiers.

The Republican National Committee is doing a straw poll trying to gauge support for presidential dreamers, and has 34 different names on its ballot, according to the Washington Times newspaper.

MY POINT BEING that in such a large sea, the ideological rants of Cruz could easily catch on with just enough Republican people that he winds up becoming the front-runner.

Cruz vs. Warren isn’t the biggest fantasy in the world, except for the fact that Warren herself said Monday during an interview with NPR that, “I’m not running for president.”

That is, unless the lack of a clear candidate arouses her ego to the point where she decides to change her mind. It wouldn't be a political first!

Because you also know that the moment Hillary does make it public what her intentions are, all the goodwill her name brings up now will dissipate, and the ideologues’ rants and memories of the Clinton presidential administration (“Hide the girls, Bill Clinton’s back in the White House,” is the image they will repeat over and over) will predominate the public debate.

PERSONALLY, IT’S ALL going to make me reminisce more fondly for the days of Obama. That’s how stupid the rhetoric is going to get between the presidential dreamers.

Which is why I can joke about the notion of “Abdul-Hakim Shabazz” as president. Anybody who knew him when he was a broadcaster in Springfield, or who now listens to him in Indianapolis, knows he has the over-bloated ego to be a public official.

Along with a sense of decency as a human being that many in our society – including those who actually will run for president – are totally lacking.

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