Dwight Stephens

Is it possible that Presidential electioneering now runs a two-year cycle, beginning 12 months before the first primary? Please, say it ain’t so. There appears to be some kind of unspoken and unholy marriage between the media and the political aspirants wedding each of their worst inner natures.

In his column in the New York Times on 2/8/07, David Brooks writes: “In our democracy, presidential aspirants spend a few months fighting a general election but two years positioning themselves for the primaries. That means they spend the bulk of their time in transcontinental cattle calls, competing to most assiduously flatter the prejudices of their most febrile supporters. They traffic in preapproved bromides while searching with their hyperattenuated antennas for their party’s maximum sweet spot of approval, love and applause.”

What is the point? Education of the electorate? Two or three debates before the election are far more illuminating than two years of stump speeches and “preapproved bromides” that are the result of voter surveys and that pass the approval of political consultants.

Does the two-year process weed out the light weights and the feint of heart? Or does it possibly winnow the field down to the one who, rising above the others, proves to be the unparalleled leader? Not likely. While it may prove stamina, it seems inherent in a two-year run for office that finding a true leader is one of the least likely of all possible outcomes.

As David Brooks concludes in this column, “[i]n short, our democracy, at least as it has evolved, takes individuals who are reasonable in private and it churns them through a public process that is almost tailor-made to undermine their virtues. The process of perpetually kissing up to the voters destroys the leadership qualities the voters are looking for in the first place: tranquility of spirit, independence of mind and a sensitivity to the contours and complexity of reality.” This observation clearly has a ring of truth to it. Experience supports it also.

And what about the sheer amount of time and money that is poured into the process by the press and the candidates? Am I the only one who thinks that the amount of substance that goes into campaign reporting and actual campaigning is inversely proportional to the length of the campaign? Take as examples, the spate of articles and op-ed columns about Senator Biden’s comments about Senator Obama or the Washington Post articles about minutae concerning Senators Obama and Clinton as they pass eachother on the floor of the Senate Chamber.

And am I the only one who gets annoyed when their Senator (Clinton in this case) gets side-tracked for two years running for Presidential office instead of working at that Senator job she was sent by the New York electorate to perform? In what other job can you still get paid and still hold on to your job while you spend much of your time for two years flying all over the country trying to sell yourself to a new boss for what, in your view, is a better job?

Is it possible to pass legislation limiting the process to one year–or better yet (and god forbid) six months? I’m sure the press is more than up to the task of sniffing out and filling the void reporting on matters of substance. Potential candidates, too, should breathe a sigh of relief. Let your record of accomplishments in things that matter speak for itself.