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10 Questions…on the Lengthening and Shortening of the 2008 Primaries
for Alan Fisher
With
no clear frontrunner on either ticket, the 2008 primaries that began
with the Democratic Iowa Caucus on Jan. 5 prove to be an interesting
experiment in politics and campaigns. Yet, Professor of Political
Science Alan Fisher explains that it’s not just the wide-open field that is
different about 2008: a lengthened campaign season and shortened
election window have major implications for who will be able to
break away from the packs for the presidential election. When was the last time both primaries were so wide open? It’s the first truly wide open election in 56 years dating back to when Eisenhower and Adali Stevenson won their respective primaries in 1952. By “wide open” I mean that neither an incumbent nor a vice president is running. You often have a diverse field for the non-incumbent party, but this year, both races are still up in the air. Besides a lot of people throwing their hat in the ring, is there any other significance to the lack of an incumbent or vice president running? In a way, it has turned the races into something of a media-created frenzy. What usually happens is the same reporters are covering the same major candidates for months, hearing them speak on the same topics. That inevitably becomes mundane and the media inevitably portrays the race in this light. But this time around, the variety of candidates has allowed reporters to be more energized by the elections and make politics more exciting than they usually can. I think you can see this in particular with the attention the debates have received, which were largely media-driven. It seems we’ve been hearing about the 2008 elections for ages, is that normal? That’s one of the other major structural changes this election has developed. Campaigning now starts more than a year out. Just to give you a sense of how abnormal that is, in Great Britain, the campaign leading up the elections for TKprime minister last only six to eight weeks. The trend toward longer campaigns has been developing for many years, but it’s reaching the point of being almost silly that candidates have to actively campaign for so long. What’s the consequence of a lengthened campaign? The most obvious ones are money and organization. You can’t sustain a campaign for more than a year unless you have lots of money and the organization to do it right. You can see this in the incredible amounts of money the top candidates have been able to fundraise – Obama and Clinton have raised something like a combined $150 billion. What do you really mean by “organization”? You need a good staff with established campaign headquarters across the country, a clear understanding of where to spend money on the campaign, and a hierarchy so that everyone is delivering the same messages. A bad example of this could be seen in John McCain’s team back in TKtimeframe. He had two primary advisors pushing him in different directions. That led to a lot of miscommunication or a lack of communication and I think you’ve seen his campaign struggle to regain its footing since. Hilary, on the other hand, seems to have the best organization. Her staff all seems to be on the same page and moving in the same direction. If she wins, it’s in large part because of how organized her campaign has been from the start, which again requires a healthy amount of money. What’s the biggest difference between this primary and all of those in the past? The wide-open field and the lengthened campaign are significant, but the single biggest difference is that the actual electoral campaign is much shorter. The primaries and caucuses start now and they’ll pretty much be over by the end of March. They used to go from now until the middle of June. Why has the actual electoral campaign been compressed in half? The last time the nomination was actually decided at one of the conventions was 1960. What I’m getting at is that the winners or at least the major front runners are decided by the primaries and caucuses at the beginning. So caucuses and primaries at the end of the primary cycle started to say, “hey, wait a second, no one is listening to us.” Their role in the democratic process was being reduced. A side effect of this was that the candidates weren’t spending any time campaigning in the state – it’s why New Hampshire and Iowa get so much attention. No one likes to be pushed aside, so states like California started scrambling to have their primaries and caucuses earlier. The result is an election that spans almost half the time that it used to. The front-loaded elections have more implications than any other single factor. What are the largest implications of a compressed primary election season? There really is no dark horse any more. The metaphor is to a race – you can come behind in a marathon, but not in a 100-yard dash runners routinely come from behind to win in 100 yard dashes – Alan doesn’t know track – handle as you see fit – how about substituting 40 yard dash? Its ok as is. With a front-loaded election season, you have to start fast and early because there’s no time to catch up. So really, it’s in part because of the shortened election season that the campaign season ahead of it got so long. What about a dark horse candidate like Mike Huckabee though? There’s been lots of talk about him making waves in Iowa. Is it conceivable that he could win? Yes. Is it likely? Not at all. He may be making lots of news in Iowa, and in part I think that gets at the media-flavor-of-the-month point I made earlier, but the last figures I saw reported that Mitt Romney has raised $60 million to Huckabee’s $2.3 million. Even if Huckabee does incredibly well in Iowa, the shortened election cycle leaves him no time to capitalize on his success to fundraise in other states. It all gets back to fundraising and organization and the lack of time to generate those at this point. Any last implications of this lengthened campaign/shortened election primary? It’s somewhat ironic, but the issues that will decide the nominees may not be the same as those that then decide the next president. I can almost guarantee you that there will be some issues that comes to a head between now and November 2008 that we do not expect. So what if you voted for a primary candidate based on his or her stance on an issue now, but then you don’t agree with his or her stance on a major issue that develops for next November? You might not have voted for him or her in the first place. You can see this in the way that Iraq has at least to some degree diminished in importance on the campaign trail recently. Another example is the sub-prime mortgage crisis that really started to make news in August. I don’t think any candidates were talking about that even six months before it hit, but now it’s a hot-button topic. There’s no way of telling what it will be, but there are some topics that are important now that won’t be a year from now and vice versa. |
