VOICES
The Invisible Primary
Now is the time for all-out coverage
There seems to be an unwritten requirement in presidential campaign journalism to begin relentless "horse race" coverage in the preseason. Reporters feel obliged to tell us which candidates are leading or trailing well over a year before any primary election votes are cast. This year has been no exception.
Unfortunately, such coverage is fanciful at best unless every candidate in the race is a multimillionaire or fund-raising genius. As The New York Times recently pointed out, a presidential contender must go into the New Hampshire primary with at least $30 million or be sucked under in the swirl of big-state delegate contests where costly TV campaigning is essential.
The Times's February 7 editorial diagnosed the root problem as "front loading" — compression of too many primaries into the nomination season's early weeks.
"Front loading" risks cutting the ordinary citizen out of the nomination process as fund-raisers and donors quietly anoint a candidate or two, hamstringing others before the press has informed the public about them in any depth. Candidates that voters might have preferred but who trail in the pre-season "money primary" face all but impossible odds.
There was a time when a grass-roots candidate had a shot at raising sufficient cash after a strong showing in Iowa or New Hampshire to build significant momentum (George McGovern in 1972, Gary Hart in 1984). This was possible because the primary season was once three months long, stretching from March to June. That gave an underdog time to make the most of his victories, drawing press coverage, supporters, organizers, and donors between one election and the next.
But since front loading took hold, there has not been enough time for an outsider to capitalize on an early win. The primaries are packed too tightly together for a poorly funded candidate to build real momentum. Thus in 1992, cash-strapped Democrat Paul Tsongas beat Bill Clinton in New Hampshire, only to be buried by Clinton money in the primary-crowded weeks that followed. In 1996 and 2000 the New Hampshire victors, Pat Buchanan and John McCain, met the same fate at the hands of the financial frontrunners, Bob Dole and George W. Bush.
Even so, journalists have tended not to focus much on how front loading can all but predetermine a nomination — perhaps because they wanted to maintain the illusion of covering a hot primary race. (See "Lost in Never-Never-Land," CJR, May/June 1996.)
When they do refer to front loading, news media generally gloss over their own huge if inadvertent role in creating the problem. It was saturation coverage of New Hampshire and Iowa, starting in the early seventies, after all, that spurred the front-loading process.
Big-delegate states eventually began to complain with some justification that two demographically unrepresentative, low-delegate contests did not merit the influence news media have bestowed. Gradually, state by state, they set primaries earlier to overshadow Iowa and New Hampshire, which have retreated to earlier election dates to get out of the shadow, prompting big states to set their primaries even earlier. The race backward toward New Year's Day is continuing this year.
So here we are in what ABC's politics Web site, "The Note," calls the "invisible primary." Candidates are active in Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere but the public doesn't see them because it isn't focusing on the coverage, which is plentiful but largely confined to dope for political insiders. But reporters have filed some amazing stories:
- Senator John Edwards, D-N.C., was observed on C-SPAN chewing gum while rival candidates spoke. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts applied lip balm during the same event. Pundits questioned whether either action was presidential. (The Washington Post, January 23)
- Former Governor Howard Dean of Vermont visited the set of TV's "The West Wing" and got the endorsement of Martin Sheen, who plays a New England governor turned president. (Associated Press, February 1)
- Senator Joe Lieberman has discussed a campaign job with an alleged symbol of the unsavory values he has denounced — the music and motion picture industry lobbyist Tony Podesta, whom some overwrought critics seem to regard as a cross between Phil Spector and Roman Polanski. "As word of these talks spreads through the political world . . . some feel Podesta . . . will spawn a wave of media accounts suggesting Lieberman is a hypocrite. ‘Tony Podesta is everything we're against,' said one longtime Lieberman backer." (Hartford Courant, January 31)
Such items are standard "preseason" fare along with endless trivial speculation about who is ahead. But coverage as usual no longer cuts it.
We are entering what is arguably the most important presidential contest since 1948. Harry Truman's victory that year set a course of "containing" the newly hostile Soviet Union. America rejected the hard-liners' call for preemptive attack and liberation of "captive nations.'' In the present contest, candidates will have to address how a post-9/11 United States should behave as the sole superpower. Will voters endorse Bush's tough, preemptive action against "rogue" states, even when allies oppose it, or some Democratic alternative? Knowing a candidate hired consulting firm X is unlikely to clue voters in to whether he's up to making life-and-death decisions on day one.
So here is a modest proposal: news media should front-load their own schedules and start full-throttle coverage of candidates' policies and characters today.
One might think the audience isn't interested yet, that war and terrorism will all but monopolize this year's news. In fact, voters probably would be very interested to learn that the system is cheapening their franchise. Compelling news reports that put this message across just might goad them to demand comprehensive candidate news while their voices and financial contributions still matter.
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