Off and running

Everybody knows the hearts of Manny Villar, Ping Lacson, Mar Roxas, Loren Legarda and Dick Gordon all ache for the presidency. But of the five of them, only Villar and Roxas are sticking their necks out this early. The others are using a more indierect approach.

Ping Lacson, for instance, prefers to constantly criticize his enemies, directing focus to their failings and only seldom calling attention to his strengths, except indirectly, as the identifiable source of the criticisms. He has apparently learned from the mistakes of others.

Take the case of President Arroyo. While still a senator, she never telegraphed her punches, was never ambiguous about her presidential ambitions. She made it plain very early. In fact, way too early. To her credit, her costly mistake later got rectified providentially.

Having stuck her neck out too early, Arroyo made herself the only visible target on the horizon. Her enemies had a field day hurling everything in her direction. Eventually Arroyo had to settle for the vice presidency and, if not for fate, would have ended her career there.

The same mistake was made by Teofisto Guingona, although the consequences of his folly were more of his own doing than of his enemies. Guingona killed his presidential chances by opening his mouth about ideas that were not in synch with presidential realities.

The greatest damage to his credibility, Guingona himself uttered on Dong Puno Live, beamed to a nationwide primetime audience. Asked for priorities if elected, Guingona ticked off food production, garbage collection, and traffic management.

There was probably no problem with food production since everybody has to eat. But garbage collection and traffic management? Why, these were the stuff of which mayors and barangay captains made or broke their reputations, not presidents.

Interestingly, Guingona also made vice president. But that was it. Everything went downhill for the man who would be president. He has since been involved in a series of stupid mistakes, including lending his frail body to a revolt against, of all people, Arroyo.

Loren Legarda, too, made a similar mistake, by choosing to cross swords for the vice presidency with a fellow television superstar who was probably her equal in popularity. Loren, the more intellectual, appealed to the upper brackers. Noli de Castro took the masses.

Evenly matched, the battle boiled down to political machinery, which de Castro enjoyed.

Had Loren waited, Noli would have exposed his incapabilities, and it would have been a breeze for Loren later in the game, like Fortinbras.

Noli is one of the reasons why attempts to replace Arroyo ahead of her term do not seem to take off the ground. Not only are people sick and tired of power grabs, they also shudder to think of Noli as a constitutional replacement.

So we will have to wait until 2010. In the meantime, Manny Villar and Mar Roxas have hit the ground running. Of course, in politics Philippine style, the first day in office is the beginning of another campaign, whether for reelection or for election to another position.

But 2010 is still a rather long way off. And that is why potentially good materials like Manny Villar and Mar Roxas have taken a great risk in exposing themselves too early. Now they are fair game to their enemies.

Of course it will help that these two have oodles of resources to mount a campaign this early. Also, the two gentlemen seem relatively clean and may take some real battering to make anything stick. Still, time and distance are huge obstacles that can wear them down.