Santorum’s pragmatic move sets the November line-up

It became obvious more than a week ago that President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney were running against each other. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s announcement Tuesday made it all but official.

Yes, we know that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former Speaker Newt Gingrich took pains Tuesday to say nice things about Santorum — perform prominently describing themselves as the surviving conservative alternatives to Romney. But we’re talking political reality here.

Gingrich is running for two things: a speaking slot, hopefully prime time, at the Republican National Convention in Tampa and a chance to use that occasion to rewrite the history of his failed speakership. Paul is running because — what else is the nation’s highest profile libertarian going to do? And, who knows, he might build some name recognition for the next generation, his son, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

But even those who were hoping for a drawn- out primary and the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of a brokered convention had to see the handwriting on the wall after Romney’s sweep of Michigan and Arizona, followed by Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Santorum was facing a possible loss in his home state of Pennsylvania and was losing an inside-politics fight to make Texas a winner-take-all primary. The recent break in campaigning brought on by the illness of his daughter gave him an opportunity assess his relationship with God, country and family.

And on a pragmatic political level, he may have also seen that dropping out now would give him a better chance of coming back as the UnRomney in 2016 if Romney loses in November. That possibility would have been diminished had he ended his run with any longer of a losing streak, and if he had been seen as doing any greater damage to the reputation and campaign coffers of the party’s now-obvious tandard bearer.

Girding for battle

The rest of the nation can now take a breath — but only a short one — before six months of almost unrelenting campaigning. Every presidential affirmation will be subject to rebuttal by Romney. Every Romney rebuttal will be subject to reaffirmation from Obama or his spokesmen.

This process might result in a some understanding of what these candidates stand for, but it’s really likely to produce more heat than light.

We can hope for the best, which would be that the conventions provide insight into the clearly different visions that the candidates and their parties have for the nation. And that the inevitable debates allow each candidate to tell the American people more about how he will help the nation, rather than how his opponent will damage it.

And, of course, there is the distinct danger that even if Romney and Obama speak clearly, the overwhelming background noise from hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising — most of it negative and designed to appeal to emotions rather than logic — will drown out the candidates themselves.