Politics with an elliptical soccer ball

Warren Gamaliel Harding, the last in an illustrious line of seven or eight U.S. presidents hailing from Ohio (depending on whether one counts the Ohio-born senator for Indiana, Benjamin Harrison), was the first president to ride in a motor car to his inauguration in 1921. "I am not fit for this office and never should have been here," he said of himself, after it was too late for those who voted for him to do otherwise. Either way, he had little time to do much damage: He died of complications from pneumonia only two years after being elected.

Since Harding's election, no native of Ohio has become president, though the state has entertained many visitors who coveted the presidency. This state in recent years has become a decisive battleground for politicians who, like Harding, want the presidency but are not necessarily well-suited for it. In 2004, George W. Bush and John Kerry vied for its votes in the general election, and it was Bush's triumph in Ohio that granted him four more years in the White House. Fatefully, Ohio is again a critical battleground in this U.S. election, and doubly so. In November's election, it may reclaim its decisive role in the 2004 election, the same role that Florida filled in 2000 when Bush took the state by a few hundred votes and, by so doing, the election. In the meantime, the U.S. national attention will turn to Ohio before Tuesday, when its primary will decide the fate of former first lady Hillary Clinton, who is desperately seeking to return to the White House, this time as president.

Nobody knows what Clinton's post-battle calculations will look like. Four states are up for grabs: The important states of Texas and Ohio, and little Vermont and Rhode Island. With every day, the pressure on Clinton to suspend her campaign grows. In Tuesday's debate, Clinton's rival for the Democratic Party's nomination, Barack Obama, used a rhetorical device that made it sound as though she were about to drop out: He eulogized her. But Clinton has not given up yet. Next Tuesday, she will have to reevaluate her chances. If she wins in Ohio and Texas, she will push on. But what if she only takes Ohio and one other of the small states? Or, say, Ohio and both small states? And how about just Ohio?

At the moment, she is still being looked upon favorably in Ohio. If she stays in the race, this may give her an advantage as the next important primary is in neighboring Pennsylvania, which suffers from similar problems: An economy reliant on outdated industry, and closed factories. If the focus is on the economy and not foreign policy, then Ohio and Pennsylvania may save Clinton. Only for something like that to happen, she has to remain in the race at least until April. Republican frontrunner John McCain would relish such a scenario, one greatly feared by senior Democratic officials, in which the decisive primaries will drag into the summer, and then the Democratic Party's national convention, where an ugly debate over whether to include Florida and Michigan's delegates, which were disqualified because both states moved up their primaries in order to be competitive, is bound to erupt.

An astute Israeli diplomat drew a parallel between the race and "a game of soccer, only that an American football has replaced the round soccer ball. You know which direction the ball is being kicked but whenever the ball hits the ground you have no idea in which direction it will bounce." At the recent debate, Obama praised Israel and declared its security as "sacrosanct," no less. His remark was unexpected because the debate was devoted mostly to domestic issues: The economy and health insurance; matters that U.S. voters are much more concerned with, certainly those in Ohio.

A quote by former U.S. president James Garfield (1881), also from Ohio, seems particularly relevant to Tuesday's debate, the 20th such event that included Obama and Clinton. "Few men in our history have ever obtained the presidency by planning to obtain it," Garfield said. That was a different era, a different system, but something still rings true in what he said. Clinton looked in this debate the same as she did in those that preceded it: Very ready for the job; in fact, too ready. She lacked vitality. Maybe that's what will deny her from obtaining what Garfield obtained without planning to do so. Incidentally, neither Harding nor Garfield ended their terms the way they planned: The former died of a heart attack and the latter was gunned down six months after his inauguration.