In search of their ‘hockey stick moment’

ON THE TRAIL

By Chuck Todd

Political Director

updated 9:56 a.m. ET Feb. 7, 2007

Chuck Todd Political Director • E-mail

WASHINGTON - There's a slang term in the corporate world that many start-up businesses view as the Holy Grail. It's called the "hockey stick moment" — the point in a graph where a company's profits skyrocket from being comfortable but flat to a peak. Business leaders often don't realize their enterprise has hit that moment until after it's happened.

A number of presidential candidates have experienced hockey stick moments, including Jimmy Carter in 1976, George H.W. Bush in 1980, Gary Hart in 1984, both Ross Perot and Bill Clinton in 1992, John McCain in 2000 and Howard Dean in 2004.

As these examples show, hockey stick moments don't necessarily last; in some cases, they form another hockey stick on the line graph that heads in the wrong direction (e.g., Perot and Hart). But the one thing all of these "hockey stick" candidates have in common is that they burst on the political scene out of nowhere to become either the establishment candidate of their party (e.g., Clinton, Bush and Carter) or a big scare for the establishment (e.g., Dean and McCain).

This cycle, each party's presidential primary field has one establishment candidate — New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democrats and McCain for the Republicans — and a number of hockey stick hopefuls.

Three of these contenders are formalizing their candidacies this week or next. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) made his campaign more official on Monday with the decision to file formal papers [PDF]. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) will announce his candidacy formally on Saturday, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) will announce his bid next Tuesday.

These three candidates have establishment-like characteristics, but in order to surpass Clinton or McCain, they'll need to get hot enough to see a hockey stick-like rise in their poll numbers. That's very hard to plan. Of the three, Romney is best positioned to have a moment like this because the expectations he starts with are quite low. Even small movements in the polls (starting with single digits and then onto double digits) can be taken as momentum.

The trickier position to be in is the one both Obama and Giuliani occupy. Giuliani has the burden of incredible poll ratings, and Obama has the burden of media expectations.

I wrote extensively last week about how Giuliani can achieve this bump. His "moment" will come if conservatives decide they need to nominate someone who's electable and who they can trust to at least not set back the conservative movement. If he can convince Republicans that he can both win the general election and mark some time for the conservative agenda, then he may see his already high personal ratings stay high. This has to happen, of course, while somehow keeping the New York press corps from dredging up his past (a far trickier thing).

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