Although the next presidential election won't take place until November 2008, and the nominating conventions won't convene until next August and September, the media have been covering the candidates all through 2007 as though they were running a horse race. What is it about presidential politics that evokes horse-race metaphors?

The media have designated and re-designated the Republican "front-runner": John McCain, then Mitt Romney, then Rudy Giuliani, then Mike Huckabee. The media are also speculating whether Hillary Clinton will lose her front-runner status to Barack Obama.

Next summer, the presidential nominee of each party will take the reins of his party, and hopefully then of government. He - or she - will choose a "running mate," and the losers will become footnotes in history books as "also-rans."

The most fascinating horse-race metaphor that might emerge in this campaign is the "dark horse," a well-recognized label for a long-shot candidate who was not in what is now called the top tier. A dark horse's chance of winning the nomination depends on a deadlock among the leading candidates who are unable to cross the finish line with a majority of delegates.

Early in 2007, the media were confidently announcing that the presidential nominations of both parties would be locked up in the early primaries. It now appears just as likely that the early primaries will confirm the fact that Republicans are divided.

Each of the five top-tier Republican candidates has received endorsements from important Republicans, some of whom have state Republican organizations to deliver delegates, and some with large grass-roots constituencies. No poll shows any of these candidates with anywhere near a majority of Republican support.

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll reported that none of the Republican candidates is viewed favorably by even half the Republican electorate. There is no clear leader: Giuliani was the choice of 22 percent of respondents, Huckabee of 21 percent, Romney of 16 percent, and McCain and Thompson each had 7 percent. Among Republican respondents, 76 percent say they could still change their minds about whom to support. Maybe that's because all five leading candidates are globalists and none of them has a solution for the problem of millions of Americans who have lost jobs or had their wages depressed because of unfair trade agreements, outsourcing of jobs overseas, and insourcing foreign workers. A book of political history from 2003 called "Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield" (Carroll & Graf, $16) might provide the model. Kenneth D. Ackerman tells the fascinating story of how the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago deadlocked, with three sets of delegates unwilling to abandon their first choice, and a totally unexpected non-candidate dark horse named James A. Garfield was nominated on the 36th ballot and then elected president.

Sen. James G. Blaine of Maine was the first major name placed in nomination, soon followed by New York powerhouse Sen. Roscoe Conkling's nomination of war hero Gen. U.S. Grant for a third term. The third major contender was Treasury Secretary John Sherman, nominated by his friend and campaign manager Sen.-elect James A. Garfield. Continued...