R&L 2008 Election Blog

The Fresh Faces in American Politics

By Gary A. Donaldson

This election cycle has exhibited an important American political phenomenon: the fresh face, the political outsider, the candidate who is the antidote to politics as usual. Accompanying the fresh face is the rhetoric
of renewal, change and the implied promises of new ideas and attitudes and solutions toward old problems.

Since the end of World War II both parties have looked in the direction of the political outsider and the fresh face to bring renewed excitement and victory to their parties. Sometimes it has worked, sometimes not.

Perhaps one of the best examples of a political fresh face was Eisenhower. Ike had been in the public eye for some time, but he had only been discussed seriously as a politician since the end of the war. He was always perceived in the American mind as someone outside the political spectrum; and in fact, Ike worked hard to show his disdain for politics by insisting often that he would not run for office, that he had no intention of
getting down into the mud and slugging it out with politicos like Truman. At one point, he even admitted that he had never found a need to cast a ballot, and he often let it be known that he had no party affiliation (although behind the scenes he told those close to him that he was a life-long Republican.) In 1953, when Ike became President, he brought to Washington the new outlook he promised—perhaps the fulfillment of the fresh face in politics.

In 1960 the Democrats tapped John Kennedy, the freshest of all fresh political faces. Although Kennedy had been in national politics since the end of the war, he campaigned in 1960 as a political outsider who would bring a new atmosphere to Washington, take the nation in a new direction, and change the old rhetoric—then portrayed by the eight years of the now stale Eisenhower administration. He worked hard to cast Nixon, the presumptive successor to Ike and the Republican nominee that year, as the keeper of the ancien regime, the man who would carry on the old Eisenhower policies.

This placed Nixon in an awful position as the 1960 election approached. Kennedy was winning points (and presumably votes) with his “let’s get American moving again” slogan. If Nixon tried to step out on his own
by proposing new ideas he appeared to be criticizing Eisenhower and his policies, even ungrateful to his mentor. If he simply parroted the Eisenhower line, he appeared to have no new ideas, and was little more than Ike’s “lapdog with a five o’clock shadow,” as one pundit described Nixon in this period. So, Nixon fought the 1960 campaign mostly with one hand tied behind his back.

By portraying himself as an outsider and a new comer with new ideas, Kennedy also placed himself at a disadvantage—although he did not have nearly the problems Nixon had. Kennedy found himself answering claims that he was too inexperienced to be president. Clearly, Kennedy could not have it both ways. He could not be the new young fresh face in politics and an experienced politician as well. He spent much of the campaign defending his record in Congress and making such statements that he was older than Christopher Columbus when he came to American, and older than Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Kennedy spent much of the 1960 primary season trying to show that he was experienced enough to attract votes. In office, JFK’s promises and hopes translated into very little legislation, despite a
Democratic Congress.

In 1976 the Democrats turned to another outsider, Jimmy Carter. The nation was clearly fed up with the antics of Washington insiders in those years. The conduct of the war in Vietnam and then finally the Watergate scandal had turned the nation away from Washington insider politics. Carter stepped into the breach. A Georgia governor and peanut farmer, Carter actually prided himself on not understanding the workings of Washington—and that seemed to endear him to voters. He was a wonderful campaigner. He spoke good words; he energized the Democratic Party and the nation. But when Carter got to Washington he could not work his will, and to most observers it was because he did not know the nuances of Washington politics. And he foundered. Four years later he was vulnerable to attacks from a Republican outsider, a new fresh face with new ideas from the other side of the political spectrum, Ronald Reagan. Carter went from the outsider to the insider, from the new fresh face to the old politico who needed to be bumped from office.

That brings us back to the current election cycle and Barak Obama, the new fresh face, the candidate with the charisma and the good words. He has energized the Democrats with talk of new ideas and change.
Democrats have to ask, will that translate into a good president?

Gary A. Donaldson is professor of history at Xavier University of Louisiana. He is the author of many books on American history in the 20th century, including The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon,
and the Election of 1960.

The ABC News Debate: The Questioners Take Center Stage

By Stephen J. Farnsworth

Normally, post-debate analysis focuses on the presidential candidates and what they said. But following last week’s ABC News Pennsylvania debate the most intense scrutiny was on the questioners – Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos – not on Hillary Clinton, not on Barack Obama.

The nation’s editorial pages and many bloggers attacked the two reporters for devoting roughly 40 minutes to a rehashing of personal matters about the candidates: including the much-discussed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the alleged snipers facing down the former First Lady in the Balkans, who wears and doesn’t wear a flag pin, and the infamous “bitter-gate” remark. The two also tried to open up a new scandal area, observing that Bill Ayers, one of Obama’s supporters used to belong to the Weather Underground, a violent terrorist group from the 1960s.

For the hundreds of thousands of Americans struggling to pay the gasoline bill and worried about losing their homes, their jobs or their health insurance, ABC News delivered a breathtaking performance. The ABC debate debacle is a reminder of how often candidate events that have more audience participation – like the Democratic Party’s YouTube forum and the various “town-meeting” style debates – can be more informative than when journalists dominate the questioning. ABC News’s turn away from issues may also help explain why the network news audience continues to shrink.

Call it mass-media myopia. Too often, reporters are obsessed with the sports of politics, obsessing about who is ahead and what can be done strategically to change the dynamics of the campaign. Data collected over the past five presidential elections cycles by the Center for Media and Public Affairs demonstrate that network television routinely follows the “horse-race” aspects of the campaign and provides only limited coverage of more substantial matters, like issues. Surveys show that voters consistently say they want more serious, issue-based news than they get during presidential campaigns.

With their scandal quest, the reporters were previewing the general election, when Republican activists are likely to raise similar matters to try to derail the campaign of whichever senator becomes the Democratic presidential nominee. Attacks by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) four years ago remain fresh in media minds.

Even so, the amount of time the ABC reporters focused on scandal news was excessive. More time for policy matters in that debate would have been a great asset to voters, particularly since the home-mortgage crisis, trade concerns, and rising consumer prices for food and gasoline have all increased in severity during recent weeks. A March 19-22 Pew Research Center Poll, for example, found that 56 percent of those surveyed said the national economy was in poor shape, as compared to 28 percent in a January survey. Nearly half of those polled listed rising prices as their top economic concern.

Unfortunately, the ABC News questions revealed that some reporters remain more interested in talking than in listening.

Stephen J. Farnsworth is associate professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington and co-author, with S. Robert Lichter, of The Nightly News Nightmare: Television’s Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988-2004, Second Edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) and The Mediated Presidency: Television News and Presidential Governance (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

McCain, Obama, and the Reform Argument

By Steven E. Schier

Much of the coverage in the political media this year fails to address widespread public concerns about politics. The media talk is often all about issues. The tone is one of constant conflict and squabbles.

Both are big turnoffs to many in the public. The candidate who wins the White House in 2008 will employ a way of communicating with voters that the political media often misses. So far, John McCain and Barack Obama have done the best job of communicating to voters in this way.

Call it the “reform argument.” Ross Perot milked surprising success from it in 1992. The public hates political disagreements and squabbling, desiring instead a government by a trustworthy set of guardians who won’t shove complex policy substance in their faces. Citizens don’t make time for much issue content and hate political fights.

These conclusions come from a landmark book depicting how the American public views their government: Stealth Democracy by John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. Employing a detailed survey they commissioned from Gallup and focus groups in four American cities scattered in all regions of the country, they discovered that citizens view politics in ways media and political elites wouldn’t recognize.

First, Americans hate political disagreement, and aren’t much interested in policy substance. So much of politics as usual is a snooze for them.

Second, they are most concerned that political leaders are granting unfair advantage to special interests in corrupt ways. To the public, special interests—defined as interests that are not their own—are all bad. The public views campaign contributions as direct payments into politician’s pockets. Washington, to them, is a cesspool of illicit funds.

Most candidates talk abstractly about policies, raise big campaign money, and fight over issues. To the extent they become deeply identified with such behavior, they fit the negative public stereotype of what is wrong with politics.

Instead, as Perot did, they need to stress their separation from politics as usual, their desire for process solutions like more direct democratic institutions, campaign finance reform and strengthened lobbying regulation. And they need to have “walked the walk” on these issues over their careers.

It helps if you are wealthy enough to self-fund your campaign. Then, in the public mind, you can’t be bought and your spiel is likely to be viewed as more sincere. Michael Bloomberg, take note.

Hibbing and Theiss-Morse find that the public wants to be governed by ENSIDS—
(Empathetic Non-Self-Interested Decision makers). With ENSIDS guarding governmental institutions, citizens can feel comfortable paying less attention to politics, which is a widespread desire.

It’s no coincidence that two presidential leaders with the most ENSID-like qualities are prospering this year. John McCain, Mr. “straight talk” and a fervent campaign finance reformer, seems headed for the GOP nomination. Barack Obama, new to Washington and sporting the freshness of an uncorrupted agent of “change,” is faring well in his pursuit of the Democratic nomination.

The reformer label—Mr. or Ms. ENSID—is an invaluable asset in contemporary electoral politics. It’s time more reporters, candidates and consultants recognized that.

Steven E. Schier is Congdon Professor of Political Science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.

C-SPAN's Window into the Political Process

For most of the contemporary era, election campaigning was dominated by a symbiotic relationship between candidates attempting to broadcast a message and highly controlled media outlets picking and choosing what they would consider as news.. Politics became a game of competing sound bite initiatives in which the candidates hoped to capture voters and television networks hope to titillate and draw in audiences. By 2004, the average candidate sound bite had shrunk to about 7 seconds, about the amount of time it takes to say, “Hello, my name is….” While sound bite politics is still part of the process, a number of new players have entered the arena and changed the calculus. The change was not cataclysmic, but rather gradual.

C-SPAN Founder, Brian Lamb, built on his experiences as a military public affairs offices, Senate staff member and journalist to come to the conclusion that being limited to the three television networks failed to capture the full flavor of politics in Washington. He felt that the public deserved and wanted more voice and more detail.

When C-SPAN (The Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network) entered the scene in 1979, it bucked the trend toward sound bite coverage and committed itself to full coverage of congressional sessions and later public policy forums and candidate speech. As much as possible, viewers gained full access to events as if they were in the audience. Going a step beyond the formal even itself, cameras were turned on during the preparations and for the wind down after an event captured the non-scripted aspects of the endeavor. Later C-SPAN would begin following candidates around as they participated in traditionally uncovered campaign activities such as “meet and greet sessions,” coffee klatches, and pep talks to volunteers. By seeing the entire event, the C-SPAN audience gained the context with which to better understand issues and measure the mettle of candidates. Such coverage “caught” candidates such as Joe Biden in duplicitous statements undermining their campaigns, while others such as Bill Clinton used the new vehicle for broadcasting their capabilities. C-SPAN tapes have become the repository of political statements of politicians for the last 30 years, making duplicity more apparent.

As technology changed, C-SPAN invested heavily in web-based distribution of content, pioneering information on demand (www.c-span.org). Now interested citizens could easily find and view full events mentioned in brief form by the mainstream media. For the first time, viewers could see campaign commercials for candidates vying for various levels of office around the country. C-SPAN archived recent events for immediate viewing and supported a long-term archive of all its programming. Years before YouTube began archiving sound bites for viewing on demand, C-SPAN made the entire event accessible.

The extended 2008 primary season gave C-SPAN the opportunity to become the political “network of record.” Few people could keep up with all the events debates and speeches. While the major networks picked up events such as Mitt Romney’s defense of his Mormon faith and Barack Obama’s repudiation of the extreme comments of his minister, C-SPAN was there for less publicized events. Rather than giving snippets of victory and concession speeches, they covered them in their entirety. C-SPAN viewers saw Hillary Clinton give a speech on “How to Caucus” to Iowa Democrats, Barack Obama speaking before the Black audience of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention, while John McCain is seen speaking at venues as diverse as the Anti-Defamation League and the National Rifle Association.

C-SPAN’s website is also a very useful portal for a wide range of audio, video and text resources on politics and elections. C-SPAN’s call-in programs provide an interesting measure of public sentiment on a day to day basis.

C-SPAN is not for everyone. The C-SPAN “junkies” have an atypically high interest in politics and public affairs. In the political world, C-SPAN viewers are enviable targets for political campaigns, since they vote, contribute money, talk to their friends and volunteer in campaigns. C-SPAN provides them a largely unedited window on the political process.

Steve Frantzich is Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. Two of his recent books are: Founding Father: How Brian Lamb Changed American Politics, and Citizen Democracy: Political Activism in a Cynical Age

Conventional Wisdom and the 2008 Election: The Nomination Fight

by Jody C. Baumgartner and Peter L. Francia

A recent article in the New York Times ("Soothsaying: A Scorecard on Conventional Wisdom,"March 9) provided a scorecard surveying what political pundits have gotten right and wrong in the election of 2008.

The article's author, Mark Leibovich, takes issue with the conventional wisdom that "money is everything." On this point, we have no substantive disagreement with Leibovich, only a point of emphasis. Leibovich is correct to note that this oft-repeated claim has been wrong--at least on the Republican side--in 2008. However, some developments have been more surprising than others. The failure of Republican millionaire Mitt Romney, for example, is not unprecedented. Many well-funded candidates have failed in the past: Howard Dean in 2004, Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000, and John Connally in 1980 immediately come to mind. What is surprising is that Dean, Forbes, and Connally all lost to other very well-funded candidates. This makes John McCain's victory the real head-scratcher in 2008. As recently as the past summer, the McCain campaign was effectively broke, forcing him to make major changes to his campaign staff. McCain's ability to persevere under these circumstances is almost unheard of and certainly did break with the conventional wisdom. In short, the "money" story of 2008 is not the failure of Mitt Romney and his large wallet of money, but the success of John McCain and his comparatively limited resources.

Leibovich also argues that the "Iowa is everything" assertion is overblown. Again, we mostly agree with Leibovich, but would add an important caveat. The Iowa Caucuses may not be everything to everyone, but they are everything to some. After all, Iowa did serve to narrow the field of presidential contenders in 2008. Democrats Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, for example, were officially finished as presidential candidates after their poor showings there. For them, Iowa certainly was everything. Indeed, for other long-shot candidates, such as Jimmy Carter in 1976, success in Iowa was critical to his eventual nomination victory. For frontrunners, however, Leibovich is correct about Iowa. In addition to John McCain, who finished fourth in Iowa in 2008, Bill Clinton (1992), Michael Dukakis (1988), George H.W. Bush (1988), and Ronald Reagan (1980) all survived Iowa defeats and went on to win their party's presidential nomination. Put simply, "Iowa is everything" for underdogs, but not so for frontrunners who have the resources to overcome any early troubles.

Finally, Leibovich writes that the "young people don't vote" claim has been incorrect for the 2008 primaries. While the early returns are undeniably promising for a large youth turnout in the general election, November is still months away. And past history does make clear that young people vote--consistently--at lower rates than their older counterparts. This has been true ever since the 1972 election--the first to follow the ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age to eighteen. The excitement that Senator Barack Obama's campaign has generated may certainly change this if he is the Democratic nominee; however, that still remains to be seen.

Jody C. Baumgartner and Peter L. Francia are assistant professors of political science at East Carolina University and the authors of Conventional Wisdom and American Elections: Exploding Myths, Exploring Misconceptions
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).