Thursday, August 19, 2004
How long does the political season really need to be?
Candidate Kerry has decided to forego the strategy of not spending any advertising money until Septmeber in an attempt to counter ads run by Swiftboat Veterans for truth in the swing states of Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The underlying issue for me is the notion that the Kerry campaign must stretch its public election financing moreso than the Bush campaign will have to. It makes me wonder what arrangement is made to determine when the major parties will hold their national conventions. Tradition? Mutual agreement? Does incumbency play a role? Does it follow some arrangement a la the World Series, pre-Selig?
Just what are the advantages of going first? You have to make your check last longer. Your convention bounce, if it even happens, is subsumed by the convention bounce of your opposition, and closer to the general election to boot. How much initiative can you really seize by going first, when you in fact give the opposition a month to crib together its responses. It's like giving book reports back in the third grade. You don't have to necessarily look good by going later - you just have to look better by comparison. And given the short political attention spans of most Americans, you might not even have to do that. Who would willingly go first?
It would seem to me that there would be movement by the national parties to move their conventions to the "right" date as close to the general election as possible. But clearly, that's not the case, or at least, it wasn't this year. How close is close enough, or too close? Put another way, how short a campaign is still long enough? How much of the electorate is really paying attention anyway? There are still over ten weeks to the general election. Consider how long it has been going on (or how long it seems that it's been going on) and then consider that (if memory serves) that the time left is still weeks longer than most national parliamentary elections, in places like the United Kingdom. I'm not suggesting that the demands of campaigning in one borough scale up in some specific way to the demands of campaigning in a nation as large as ours. But really...is everything that had happened so far really that vital to the process in general?
Oh well, at least it gives me things to argue with Jody about...
Comments(1) |
The underlying issue for me is the notion that the Kerry campaign must stretch its public election financing moreso than the Bush campaign will have to. It makes me wonder what arrangement is made to determine when the major parties will hold their national conventions. Tradition? Mutual agreement? Does incumbency play a role? Does it follow some arrangement a la the World Series, pre-Selig?
Just what are the advantages of going first? You have to make your check last longer. Your convention bounce, if it even happens, is subsumed by the convention bounce of your opposition, and closer to the general election to boot. How much initiative can you really seize by going first, when you in fact give the opposition a month to crib together its responses. It's like giving book reports back in the third grade. You don't have to necessarily look good by going later - you just have to look better by comparison. And given the short political attention spans of most Americans, you might not even have to do that. Who would willingly go first?
It would seem to me that there would be movement by the national parties to move their conventions to the "right" date as close to the general election as possible. But clearly, that's not the case, or at least, it wasn't this year. How close is close enough, or too close? Put another way, how short a campaign is still long enough? How much of the electorate is really paying attention anyway? There are still over ten weeks to the general election. Consider how long it has been going on (or how long it seems that it's been going on) and then consider that (if memory serves) that the time left is still weeks longer than most national parliamentary elections, in places like the United Kingdom. I'm not suggesting that the demands of campaigning in one borough scale up in some specific way to the demands of campaigning in a nation as large as ours. But really...is everything that had happened so far really that vital to the process in general?
Oh well, at least it gives me things to argue with Jody about...
Comments(1) |
It's my understanding that the incumbent party goes last. I believe this has been the case since WWII, but I am uncertain as to exactly when this agreement was made.
See this link for a list of conventions going WAY back.
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See this link for a list of conventions going WAY back.
