LESS THAN a year ago, we were preparing to elect a future president of the United States whether we wanted to or not.
Merely by winning the race for governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend would have been presidential timber. She had the name and the smile. Her initials -- KKT -- came trippingly off the tongue. The national press already had "mentioned" her in the veep category.
Potentially, she would have been the first woman president, the first Kennedy president since JFK, etc. Hype, you say. The plots and subplots were poised to support a Camelot candidacy. She didn't write the scenarios, of course -- except for the one in which she lost.
But now, instead of one, Maryland has two presidential striplings: one Democrat -- Mayor Martin O'Malley -- and one Republican, Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.
It's criminally early to be thinking about it in these two cases; the timber is so green. But believe me, there's no shortage of presidential strategizing (or fantasizing).
One of Mayor O'Malley's friends said the other day that he will not be a candidate for the U.S. Senate because senators haven't become president as often lately as governors. The record hardly needs reviewing: George W. Bush was governor of Texas; Bill Clinton ran Arkansas; Ronald Reagan, California; Jimmy Carter, Georgia.
The mayor was in New York last week for a meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, party pragmatists devoted to charting paths of electability for Democrats. After its recent electoral embarrassments -- Bush-built majorities in the House and Senate -- Democrats are beset with identity confusion. They're busy re-engineering their image and looking for a horse.
Thus do we hear Mr. O'Malley criticizing the Bush administration for failing to address the needs of cities.
In New York, Baltimore's rock star leader (best young mayor in the nation, according to Esquire) found himself at least figuratively under the wing of Mr. Clinton. "Congratulations to Mayor O'Malley on being the Esquire magazine cover boy," Mr. Clinton said. "I hope it's just the beginning of greater things to come."
The mayor may already be a man of consequence in the party's galaxy of burned-out cases. A little more glamour than Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri or Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, not to mention Al Gore of Tennessee, might not hurt.
The group's strategists believe the old Democratic coalitions won't be broad enough to sustain a presidential candidacy -- so they're urging a less liberal approach.
Maybe they'd be interested in a candidate who succeeds in one of the toughest jobs in politics: big city mayor. Cover boy encomiums aside, though, Mr. O'Malley hasn't succeeded yet -- and might not ever. One reason he was urged to run for governor this year was the near impossibility of staying ahead of the disasters that plague violent, drug-ravaged cities like Baltimore.
He may not have to succeed completely, because he's a battler, a man of Irish eloquence and flair and nerve. Those qualities, taking him across partisan and city-suburban boundaries, give him obvious potential.
As matters stand in the political firmament of Maryland, the path to Annapolis is blocked by Bob Ehrlich, slayer of the Republicans' favorite dragon, a Kennedy.
Mr. Ehrlich, too, faces governmental whitewater: a deficit of awesome proportions and, in all likelihood, stubborn endurance. Democrats built it, but the Republican governor will have to erase it. If he can't cobble together a budget that does not require new taxes, does not cut vital services, does not offend African-Americans or suburban conservatives, he will be vulnerable to a challenge.
Chances are, though, that he will find a way to satisfy enough Marylanders to serve eight years.
But nothing's in stone. Maybe Mr. O'Malley can go directly from City Hall to the White House. And by then, Mr. Ehrlich may have become enough of a GOP star to find himself a contender for his party's presidential nomination.
Unlikely as it may seem, Maryland wouldn't be making history if it produced the Republican and the Democratic presidential nominees in the same year. It's happened five times, according to Sun researcher Sarah Gehring: Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois, 1860; Theodore Roosevelt and Alton B. Parker, New York, 1904; Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox, Ohio, 1920; Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, New York, 1940; FDR and Thomas E. Dewey, 1944.
So, Maryland's presidential sweepstakes didn't end on Nov. 5, Election Day. They just got more interesting.
C. Fraser Smith is an editorial writer for The Sun. His column appears Sundays.