The 1980 Watch-A Campaign Promise
Khachigian, Kenneth L.
Kenneth L. Khachigian THE 1980 WATCH A CAMPAIGN PROMISE The Republicans will run. Very soon after the 1976 elections, several political observers gave the Republican Party its last rites. Mark...
...Mark Siegel, then executive director of the Democratic National Committee, was typical: "The Republican Party is dying [and it] can't bounce back any more," he pronounced...
...As Mr...
...There were surprises in 1976 as well, premier among them the ascent of Jimmy Carter...
...As 1980 nears, the only sure thing is that this extraordinary volatility will be at work again, bedeviling candidates and their managers...
...Earlier declarations of candidacy, crowded fields of hopefuls, and a long season of 35 primary contests have transformed the making of the President into a grueling process-from a longdistance run into a marathon...
...In the face of trouble, rash and precipitous action can transform a serious, but soluble, problem into a crippling crisis...
...Carter took the oath of office, Democratic pols saw themselves back in their salad days...
...He pulled out before the NewHampshire primary in the face of polls showing him trailing Richard Nixon six to one...
...It is very likely that he will find at the conclusion of the contest a wholly different set of circumstances than he anticipated when his political odyssey began...
...In the Republican contest, Reagan bounced back unexpectedly from Ford's run of early primary victories to take the race down to the wire...
...Yet, in the two and a half years since his inauguration, Mr...
...In the end, whoever wins will have par layed a combination of skill, determina tion, intelligence, drive, toughness, and just plain good luck into success at the polls...
...Thus today's campaign operatives must be political renaissance men and women, gifted in all the arts of politics-raising funds, romancing delegates, understanding foreign and domestic issues, analyzing technical polling data, handling the media, knowing when to be tough, sensing when to be subtle...
...The race does not always go to the strong and the swift...
...With the primary season still half a year away, today's judgments about the candidates must be weighed against the cold reality of a future certain to be determined by unforeseen twists and turns...
...Muskie never recovered...
...Almost solely through the influence of the national media, people and institutions can be built up and torn down in very short periods of time...
...Indeed, it is more likely to go to the sure and the steady-the one who averts fatal mistakes by managing crises with a sense of balance and emotional equilibrium...
...More than ever before, they are buffeted Kenneth L. Khachigian, a former White House aide to President Nixon, is a public affairs consultant in San Clemente...
...In short, people blessed with intelligence, stamina, flexibility, and, above all, good judgment (the good judgment, say, to remain calm after reading negative columns in the Washington Post-the prattle from the nation's capital counts for little among New Hampshire mill workers...
...To it will fall the task of making dozens of key decisions, any one of which might mean the difference between the Presidency and obscurity...
...George McGovern finished second in the New Hampshire primary, but he fashioned a victory of sorts out of Muskie's erratic behavior and poorer than expected showing...
...And while the confusion which ensues may be entertaining to watch, it has made life miserable for presidential candidates...
...For the managing of crises, however, a candidate must rely heavily upon his campaign staff...
...Instead, voter volatility is today's most important political dynamic...
...Very quickly, however, he tripped on the impolitic utterance that he had been "brainwashed" about the war in Vietnam...
...So much for Romney...
...As this transformation of Republican prospects demonstrates, conventional political wisdoms are no longer reliable in the mercurial world of modern electoral politics...
...Some recent examples: Shortly after the 1966 elections, Michigan Governor George Romney emerged as the leading GOP presidential hopeful for 1968...
...The Republicans appear to have stanched their bleeding and, after their respectable showing in the 1978 midterm elections, they clearly believe that Carter's vulnerabilities have made the 1980 presidential nomination well worth having...
...Carter's initial reservoir of goodwill and public confidence has diminished dramatically (some say vanished), and it has become an open question whether he can survive a challenge within his own party...
...In 1972, Edmund Muskie was the Democrats' odds-on favorite until, fatigued and harassed, he overreacted to some gossip items reprinted in New Hampshire's Manchester Union Leader by tearfully attacking the paper's publisher, William Loeb...
...about by forces only partly within the control of their press agents, pollsters, and field operatives...
...These frequently wild swings of opinion have wreaked havoc with the principles that dictated political behavior in generations past...
...Those rich scenarios and grand strategies care fully laid out in the candidacy's infant stages usually bear little resemblance to the actual outcome...
...Early primary losses, temporary shortages of funds, rumors of an incipient scandal-these are the kinds of problems that can prove less damaging in the reality than in the handling...
...In the finals, Carter himself blew a 39-point lead to eke out his bare electoral majority against Ford...
...Because of its uniquely high stakes, presidential politics is especially vulnerable to these unpredictable shifts of allegiance...
...It has the brain wave of a dead person.'' In the same week, New York Times political writer Warren Weaver wrote that the judgment of many professionals in both parties was that the Republican Party was "perhaps dofcer to extinction than ever before in its 122-year history...
Vol. 12 • June 1979 • No. 6
