No Way to Pick a President by Jules Witcover

Author:Jules Witcover [Witcover, Jules]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Current Events, Political
ISBN: 9780374223038
Google: S3_qx6LbZLkC
Goodreads: 999860
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Published: 1999-01-15T11:39:49+00:00

9

A Process Gone Berserk

The major new “improvement” of the 1996 presidential election cycle—bunching up thirty-two state primaries and caucuses within the first six weeks of the political calendar, from early February through mid-March—proved to be a disaster. This “front-loading” was driven by the state political parties’ desire to have a more decisive voice in selecting the presidential nominees, and to cash in on the greater publicity, press attention, and spending by candidates’ campaigns and the hordes of news organizations covering them. One body of Republican opinion also thought that the earlier the party decided on its nominee, the faster intraparty wounds incurred during the primary competition would heal and the quicker the nominee could focus on the campaign against the Democratic nominee.

All this was academic to the Democrats in 1996 because their nominee was already established. President Clinton was certain to bid for reelection, and any Democratic primaries and caucuses were meaningless. But for the Republicans, who had a full field of contenders, the front-loading was not. So in 1996 the candidates raced from one state primary or caucus to the next at a maddening pace, and voters got only the briefest glimpses of them if at all. As could have been predicted, campaign resources were stretched to the limit, handicapping the poorest of the candidates and giving an additional advantage to the multimillionaire Steve Forbes, whose only inhibition was an unwillingness on his part to write his own personal checks.

Phil Gramm, who had labored for two years raising money for what he thought would be a long haul in 1996, was wiped out early, as a result of poor showings in Louisiana and Iowa. “Front-loading meant you had to get off to a fast start,” Gramm lamented later. “I kept saying [it would be a] marathon, not a sprint, but it turned out to be a sprint.”

Bob Teeter agrees. While “ideological candidates” like Gramm, whose appeal lies in the issues they embrace rather than in their personalities, can continue to raise money for a time, what matters for most candidates is momentum, he says. “You guys [the press] are not going to let some guy stay alive when he’s finished third in two primaries in a row.” One, Lamar Alexander, did in fact continue after finishing third in Iowa and New Hampshire, but he had to drop out of the race shortly afterward. Dole, who nailed down the Republican nomination five months before the convention, had plenty of time to focus on Clinton. But in part because of the financial demands of the front-loaded calendar, especially in light of the free-spending Forbess challenge, he had little money to spend until the August convention, when full federal financing would begin. “We went around with a tin cup,” Dole recalls. “All we could do was fly around and hold news conferences and try to get on the evening news shows. When you’re broke, you have to sit around and wait for the convention to get your check. April to August is a long, hot summer, especially when you’re running against an incumbent.

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