Michigan Policy Circle
April 29, 2004

Presidential Flatulence

“No one is paying attention—besides us political junkies,” said Matt Bennett in the April 22 New York Times. Bennett should know. He was Wesley Clark’s communications director.

The presidential race already has bored innocent bystanders to tears. The spasmodic hectoring has other folks incensed. You can’t watch two hours of television without seeing a political ad. Every day, the Bush and Kerry propaganda machines exchange jabs and, as Aldous Huxley noted years ago, merchandise themselves as you would a deodorant.

Over the next 183 days it will be “all politics all the time.” That is simply not healthy for the political system. But even a six-month pontification period is too short for some pundits already fantasizing about the 2008 contest between Bush (Jeb) and Clinton (Hillary).

People simply cannot stay energized, engaged, and alert for 183 days. The collective yawn you see is drowsiness from eternal electioneering. People who use their TiVo to skip commercials are salivating at the idea of skipping ahead in the political season. Since political detoxification is not a covered benefit in any health plan, Americans may crave just one political reform: Shorten the damned campaigns!

The obstacle to shorter campaigns is, of course, the hallowed First Amendment. The same part of the Constitution that guarantees free speech also guarantees that candidates and their backers will start bombarding the public months—even years—prior to “E-Day.”

A right can be abusive. Picture sitting through a 99-inning baseball game. (One inning’s enough for me.) Endurance is not entertainment. Excitement is in and of the moment.

On a vacation several years ago, I noticed that something had changed in our quaint little village in southern Spain. Political posters popped up out of nowhere and blanketed the place. I asked a resident what provoked the placards. “The election, of course. It’s three weeks from today. Nobody could advertise until this morning.” Spain restrains free speech and compacts campaigning into a robust and stimulating three weeks. Three weeks of passion and concentration. Here we fight bulls of an altogether different nature.

You can’t shorten American campaigns without changing the First Amendment, or at least convincing the U.S. Supreme Court that the Constitution does not take away the people’s right to statutorily restrict political advertising. A democratic dilemma has arrived: Protect unfettered, timeless campaigning—or engage voters.

It’s the economy, stupid… or is it?

Americans have been fixed on the economy as the major problem facing the nation. From a political standpoint, that has meant that November’s voters would retain or reject President Bush based on their confidence in jobs and economic growth. The conventional wisdom through the end of March this year held that should the economy (i.e., the weak economy) drive election results, Kerry would have the upper hand. The corollary held that Bush would have the edge if attention shifted to fighting terrorism.

(Still don’t think the election season is too long? Then consider how “conventional wisdom” has changed just during the month of April!)

• Voters have shifted their focus, according to Associated Press polls taken last July and early this month. The public’s fear of war has jumped from 9 to 17 percent and fear of terrorism similarly moved from 14 to 21 percent. The economy as the number one issue has slipped from 31 to 18 percent. So, this holds good news for Bush? Not so fast.
• The 9/11 Commission’s interrogation of what the White House knew and when it forgot it, combined with the mayhem of Iraqi thugs and seemingly weekly books critical of pre-9/11 strategy, should be creating a bigger albatross for Bush than joblessness. To wit, an April Newsweek poll found that 60 percent of American adults believed that the Bush administration underestimated the threat of global terrorism before September 11 (only 23 percent believed the administration took the threat seriously). So, now conjecturers reverse course: The growing economy will help Bush; the focus on terrorism and Iraq will hurt him.
• But, slow down. National polls taken after the onslaught of criticism show Bush gaining a bit of ground. Huh? Maybe the original conventional wisdom proved correct, with a little twist: Even if the Bush team screwed up and underestimated terrorism before September 11, the president gains so long as Americans focus on terrorism and international affairs.

Dizzy yet?

Today no more predicts the American mood of November than the groundhog predicts March weather. Policy Circle reader Bob Redmond, Branch ISD’s superintendent, nailed the fluidity in a comment about last month’s questions: “It’s the economy, stupid. . . No, I mean the war. . . no, the economy. . . So will go the ebb and flow.”

View other Michigan Policy Circle documents