The
Democratic senator from Massachusetts won the debate without breaking
a sweat. Literally. No, not John Kerry. That was John Kennedy,
who went head-to-head with Republican Richard Nixon on Chicago
television.
It
was the first of four debates, the most ever between presidential
contenders. Kennedy scored because he looked young and energetic
under the studio lights. Nixon suffered from a knee infection
and a bad make-up job. The year was 1960. And it was the beginning
of a new era of presidential campaigning.
Former
Associated Press newsman Walter Mears believes that campaign season
was notable for other reasons. It heralded the rise of television
in politics and sparked a shift in the nominating process. Mears,
who won a Pulitzer Prize for political reporting, had a front-row
seat for 11 presidential campaigns, 1960 through the overtime
suspense of 2000. And he has collected those experiences between
hard covers. Deadlines Past: Forty Years of Presidential Campaigning:
A Reporter’s Story is part journalist’s memoir and
part national history.
It
begins with 1960. That election was just about the last time a
presidential candidate could wander the country beyond the eye
of the camera or the reach of crowds, just about the last time
winning votes was truly a face-to-face affair. And it was the
beginning of the end of control by political bosses.
Party
leaders still chose the nominees in 1960, though there had been
primaries since 1903. But Kennedy, Mears writes, set out to prove
that a junior senator from Massachusetts, a Catholic, could win
the presidency. “When Kennedy won in West Virginia —
95 percent Protestant, Bible Belt country — his only active
rival, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, quit the campaign,
leaving only sideline candidates, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of
Texas among them. But they couldn’t stop Kennedy after those
primary victories. He had not won enough delegates to clinch the
nominating majority; the reform system that enabled candidates
to do that was a dozen years away. Kennedy’s winning strategy
was to use the primaries to make his national name, prove his
ability to win, and establish himself as a leader the party bosses
could neither ignore nor snub at the national convention.”
And
this is what it has come to. The presidential race now entails
Internet fundraising, back-to-back multicandidate debates, 24-7
television scrutiny and a scramble for percentages and delegates
in a front-loaded, fast-moving, cross-country schedule of caucuses
and primaries. It’s Survivor: The Campaign. Will more than
one, maybe two, Democratic candidates remain on the island when
you read this? Likely not.
Still,
history can offer perspective, if not solace. Illinoisans, who
head to the polls this month to make their presidential choices,
might be disappointed — and understandably so — if the
game on the Democratic side is over before they step into the
booth. Mears’ book provides a readable antidote, though,
to these late-primary blues. What comes through, as he traces
the four-decade arc of presidential selection, is just how subject
to chance it can be. The intelligent strategy that doesn’t
work. The surefire endorsement that bombs. The ad that backfires.
The tongue that slips. The photo-op that won’t die. Michael
Dukakis’ 1988 presidential bid comes to mind as something
of a set-piece on the things that can go wrong. It will be a while
before we know what to make of Howard Dean’s up-like-a-rocket,
down-like-a-rock campaign.
Beyond
the quirky particularity of the candidates and the races are what
Mears considers landmark moments. Among them, the first of the
negative television commercials. “None were more adroit or
more devastating than the 1964 Demo-cratic ads implying that [Barry]
Goldwater would risk nuclear war.” The first was the famous
daisy petal ad that showed a little girl counting backward to
a nuclear explosion. It was run only once. “The [Lyndon]
Johnson campaign did not have to sponsor it again,” he writes.
“The television networks rebroadcast it repeatedly as news,
the pictures and text were run in the newspapers.”
There
are technological advances that inevitably change politics. The
roles of the Internet and cable TV are still in evolution. On
this, Mears has some thoughts. “In theory, more voices, more
outlets, and the unlimited time and space of cable television
and the Internet should deliver more information and encourage
more interest. Instead, imitation news, shouted opinions, and
plain rumor have flowed in to fill the time and space. Instead
of attracting people, the news noise level distracts them. The
throngs who waited for Kennedy and Nixon in 1960, the fathers
who held a small child aloft to see the man who might be president
are fewer and rarer now. The familiarity of TV may have bred disinterest
instead of engagement. People can see and effectively be at a
campaign rally without going there.”
True.
But, oddly, a kind of intimacy has been recovered by the roving,
nonjudgmental camera of C-Span. Yes, we could, if we chose, “attend”
every rally in every cow pasture in Iowa. We could follow every
candidate to every diner. We could even spend the night at a caucus.
Of course, this gave us ample opportunity to observe that Iowans
often seemed as befuddled by it all as the rest of us. There are
critics who argue that Iowa doesn’t reflect the diversity
of the country, that it shouldn’t be first in the political
lineup. Or that Iowans shouldn’t be given such clout because
they won’t know what to do with it. That may be true as well.
Yet it is still a place where the serious candidate must pull
up a chair, put his or her feet under the kitchen table and share
some actual face time with voters. The rest of us can be there,
too. And, in that sense, Iowa has become the nation’s caucus.
There
is a downside for the candidates in all this exposure. If Dean’s
now-infamous speech had occurred out of the camera’s line
of sight, if there is such a place, it never would have hit what
Mears calls the echo chamber. That speech was replayed hundreds
of times on television and set to music on the Internet. But who’s
to say what was bad for Dean wasn’t good for us?
There
may be fewer presidential contenders by the time the road show
gets to Illinois. But look at it this way: We’ll know more
about the survivors than did the voters in Iowa or New Hampshire.
So vote as if it still matters. It just might, over the long run
anyway.
CURRENT ISSUE
