With so much happening in the world, I hadn’t given too much thought to Lou Dobbs’ sudden departure from CNN. But taking stock of it now I had not considered the boon it is for people in the political mockery business — and that’s not nothing in these uncertain economic times.
Dobbs isn’t just considering running for political office. He’s considering a run for the White House in 2012. Thing is, though, that’s a ways off. And he can’t just sit around chilling for two and a half years. So … well, let’s hear how a spokesman for Lou puts it. “I think Lou is realistically saying, that’s a long way off, but if he did run for office there’d have to be an intermediary step, such as the Menendez seat,” Dobbs’s spokesman Robert L. Dilenschneider told The New York Times.
So, yes, Dobbs may run for the presidency. But as a warm up, as it were, he might run for senate against Menendez.
Admittedly, Dobbs v. Menendez would have some iconic oomph in the Dobbs Universe, with the whole white guy taking a job back from a Hispanic angle. But there is the problem of Menendez being up for reelection in 2012 rather than 2010. So I’m not sure how that’s an intermediate step for running against Obama in 2012. Or maybe I just don’t understand the math.
In any case, please don’t tell me I’m the only one who remembers Dobbs and Space.com. In case you don’t, this isn’t the first time Dobbs left CNN. He left in 1999 to found and run internet start-up Space.com. Alas, like so many boom era ventures, Space.com had a fiery reentry when the dot.com market collapsed. And Dobbs was back at CNN a year or so later.
All of which tells me that the night is still young. If this politics thing doesn’t work out, Dobbs could be back at CNN by 2011.
