Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

powerclown · 02-22-2007, 10:22 PM

How do you vote in regards to picking your leaders: With your mind or with your heart?
Are you more concerned with their stance on issues, or their charisma, inspiration and energy?

Quote:

Flaw System
Is electability the best way to judge presidential candidates?
by Jonathan Cohn
February 1, 2007

The reaction to Senator Barack Obama's forays into Iowa and New Hampshire last month was nothing short of spectacular. "We originally scheduled the Rolling Stones," New Hampshire Governor John Lynch quipped, "but we canceled them when we figured out that Senator Obama would sell more tickets." Still, the better Obama performed, the more one question began to dog him: Was such a young candidate, particularly an African-American one, electable? "I think he's a serious candidate, but I don't think he has great potential [to win a national election]," one skeptical New Hampshire voter told The New York Times' Adam Nagourney. "No track record, and there are too many guys ahead of him in line."

Of course, electability questions are old hat to Obama's presumptive rival, Senator Hillary Clinton. Since she first began hinting at a run for the presidency, experts and voters alike have been discussing whether she is capable of winning a national election--with mixed results, at best. "The test," longtime Iowa Democratic pol Rob Tully explained recently, "will be whether she can beat the image problem-- the perception out there [among Democrats] that she is not electable among the general electorate."

You can understand why Democratic activists, funders, and voters are dwelling on such questions. They want to win the election--and, given everything that is at stake during a presidential election, there's certainly nothing wrong with that. But will talking about electability actually lead the Democrats to nominate a candidate who is, in fact, electable? Recent experience suggests it may not.

The last time Democrats had to choose a nominee from a large field of candidates, in 2004, voters in the primaries said time and again that they had resolved to follow their minds rather than their hearts. Determined to beat President Bush any way they could, they picked the candidate who they believed stood the best chance of winning in the general election, rather than the candidate they liked best. And, with that in mind, they came up with reasons to reject almost every candidate.

Wesley Clark? He was too much of a political novice to win a general election. Howard Dean? Red staters could never stomach his left-wing extremism. John Edwards? More conservative voters might perceive him as too inexperienced, particularly on foreign policy. Dick Gephardt? Swing voters would associate him with the old, wasteful Democratic Party. Among the leading contenders, that left only John Kerry, who had no similarly glaring flaws. And that's a big reason (though, admittedly, not the only reason) he eventually became the nominee.

No doubt, the political flaws 2004 voters perceived in the other candidates were genuine. Dean's perceived extremism would indeed have been a hard sell down South; Clark really was prone to the stumbles you'd expect of a political rookie. Still, the calculation of voters was curiously one-sided--measuring candidates almost exclusively in terms of their flaws, rather than taking stock of their attributes, as well. It was if a Wall Street analyst sized up a company by examining its liabilities, while disregarding its assets. And the result was a predictably misguided conclusion.

If Kerry lacked the vulnerabilities of some of his rivals, he also lacked their skills. He couldn't win people over with charm or inspiration. And, while he had a bevy of nifty policy proposals, he had no grandiose, overarching message with which to sell them. So when the general campaign got tough, Kerry had no reservoir of public enthusiasm or support on which to draw. And, when the Republicans attacked what was supposedly his best asset--his record of heroism in Vietnam--Kerry didn't have the tools to fight back successfully.

You could plausibly argue that, in the end, Kerry did no worse than his rivals would have--that, given the state of public opinion and the effectiveness of the Republican attack machine, no Democrat could have won in 2004. (For the record, I think either Edwards or maybe even Clark could have done better.) Even so, it's hard to ignore the contrast between the logic that led Democrats to pick Kerry in 2004 and the logic that led them to pick Bill Clinton in 1992--the last time Democrats picked a successful nominee from a crowded field of contenders.

After all, Clinton in 1992 had precisely the sorts of electability problems that would have disqualified him by 2004 standards. He was the governor of a small, backwater state with a well-known history of political cronyism and corruption. And, far more important, he had a well-chronicled record of womanizing--a record that burst into the open right on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.

But when the time came for Democrats to cast their ballots, they embraced Clinton anyway--for the very simple reason that he reached them in a way other candidates didn't. For some, it was his sheer charisma. For others, it was his ability to identify with the anxiety they were feeling. And for more, it was his serious discussion of ideas that held real promise for improving their lives.

The Democrats didn't ignore electability altogether; they were certainly aware of the ways that Clinton's Southern roots and relatively conservative stances on issues like welfare would endear him to swing voters. Still, the Democrats didn't dwell on electability, either. If anything, they ended up voting with their hearts--embracing the candidate they genuinely liked the most. Their thinking was more substantive than strategic. And that led them, naturally, to choose the candidate with the greatest political potential.

In the end, Clinton survived all of the attacks on his character, not just in the campaign but much later in office, because, no matter how intense those attacks became, he always had a reservoir of natural political talent--not to mention a well-constructed political message--that he could parlay into new political support. And because he could do so, he emerged as the most popular Democratic politician of his generation.

We don't know yet which of the 2008 contenders has similar potential. It could be either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or maybe John Edwards or even a relative unknown like Tom Vilsack. But one thing is certain: Thinking too hard about electability, in the way we did in 2004, is no way to find out.

Thinking about another Clinton running for President has led me to wonder about how candidates on both sides will be regarded in 2008. Hillary doesn't strike me as overly charismatic or with great vision (yet), but more along the lines of ambitious, ruthless, calculating. Whereas Obama seems to be the rockstar (for now) with all the personal charisma and magentism. Both are in a fierce struggle in the polls and press, with battlelines on just such issues being drawn. This past week we saw Hillary recently looking to tarnish Obama's rockstar image by pulling him into conventional political warfare.

Thoughts?