A Swinging Election
barnett, dean
A Swinging Election The 2008 campaign is already more volatile than 2004. BY DEAN BARNETT On the night after John Kerry won the 2004 New Hampshire primary and became the Democratic party’s...
...McCain’s biggest lead has been 5 points, Obama’s 8. That’s more than double the drama that Kerry/Bush could manage in nine months...
...As for John McCain, while it sometimes seems like he’s been a political fi xture since the powdered wig era, he also represents something new...
...As America gets to know Obama better, the race will have its share of swings...
...Prior to his nomination, John Kerry was relatively obscure...
...Indeed, the issue that inflamed lefty passions for the past fi ve years— Iraq—has receded...
...For additional measure, Bush tossed in one of the most inept televised debate performances in the history of modern presidential campaigning...
...And every time a Jeremiah Wright or William Ayers slinks out from his past into the national spotlight, Obama will lose ground...
...And yet throughout the uncomfortable getting-to-know-you process that America went through with Kerry, his numbers remained constant...
...No matter what happened, the race remained static...
...More volatility might also have been expected from President Bush’s end...
...BY DEAN BARNETT On the night after John Kerry won the 2004 New Hampshire primary and became the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee, the dour senator trailed George W. Bush in a Rasmussen Reports poll by three points...
...Where 2004 offered only 5 points of variance, Rasmussen thinks we may see up to 25 points this time around...
...Scott Rasmussen, he of the all-knowing Rasmussen Reports polls, thinks we’re in for a bumpy ride...
...The issue that has infl amed lefties even more is receding still more dramatically: George W. Bush...
...For political junkies, it was rather dull...
...This year, Rasmussen sees no issue similarly dominating the political landscape...
...More relevant to the race’s potential volatility, he’s also remarkably undefi ned...
...Throughout the 2004 election cycle, the news from Iraq consistently got worse...
...No matter how badly Bush or Kerry messed up, his numbers held steady...
...And then there’s the nature of the two candidates themselves...
...Theoretically, the challenger’s numbers should have bounced around as America got to better know the haughty, windsurfing, multiple millionaire-marrying senator...
...Kerry fi t in rather well with the public’s preexisting notions of this particular political animal...
...Since it became apparent that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee several weeks ago, the Rasmussen polls have swung like 1970s suburbanites...
...It wasn’t that way in 2004...
...Intuitively, one would have predicted a more volatile race...
...Every time he commits one of his frequent gaffes, he’ll raise doubts...
...Yet still, Bush’s numbers remained constant...
...Growing doubts about the president’s aptitude accompanied that deteriorating situation...
...Going by the weekly averages of the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, the largest lead held by either candidate at any point in the race was a paltry 2.8 percentage points...
...Neither candidate ever managed to open a large lead...
...While it would be unrealistic for the McCain campaign to even hope that Bush becomes an irrelevancy before November, new issues like an unstable economy and $4 a gallon gas are pushing aside the old ones...
...Again, this year it’s different...
...The Bush/Kerry matchup was the exact opposite of a political roller coaster...
...You also had an issue that was front and center in the administration’s mind, the opposition’s mind and the public’s mind—the war on terror...
...The public’s perception of the 2008 candidates is still a fl uid thing...
...While it may be exciting for the campaigns to compete in such a fl uid environment, the nature of the race presents not only opportunity but risk...
...Even though John Kerry was new to the national stage, it turned out that he was such a familiar stock fi gure from our political theater that the public’s perception of him remained stuck in mud...
...That became the single defining issue...
...In 2004,” he told me, “you had an incumbent president who was very well defi ned...
...Obama obviously represents something brand new...
...Rasmussen foresees an extremely volatile race...
...Roughly nine months later on Election Day, in the only poll that mattered, Kerry still lagged three points behind Bush as the president won reelection...
...To date, all America knows about Obama regarding specifi c issues is that he’s very much in favor of hope and change and votes liberal down the line...
...He certainly doesn’t look like any previous presidential fi nalist, and he’s also the most dynamic political personality America has seen in at least a generation...
...Every time he gives one of his stellar speeches, he’ll win new fans...
...This year, it’s different...
...Unlike John Kerry, Obama doesn’t neatly slip into an existing political category...
...The country has never seen a race featuring two candidates like Barack Obama and John McCain...
...That means the total oscillation between the two combatants was 5.6 percentage points...
...As for George W. Bush, after four years of serving as president, the public had become accustomed to his ways...
...Most people thought a guy who had spent much of the previous seven years sticking his thumb into his party’s eye wouldn’t have a chance of getting its presidential nomination...
...This year’s gaffe-prone fi nalists will have no such luck...
...As we head off into the general Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Now that McCain has the nomination, he’s a different kind of candidate—one who has a less enthusiastic base in his party than any of his modern predecessors, but also one who’s much closer to the middle where presidential elections are typically won...
...Even Dan Rather’s clumsy effort to fabricate a controversy over Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service from three decades earlier couldn’t move the political needle...
...His scant time in politics makes him something of a cipher...
...America had seen haughty, doctrinaire liberals from Massachusetts before...
...Though the contest ended precisely where it began, the race was even less dramatic than that measure would indicate...
...election season, the question becomes whether Obama/McCain will settle into political trench warfare as Bush/ Kerry did or whether the 2008 race will continue to show the volatility it has in its opening days...
...The situations the president presided over were fl uid—fl uid in a bad way...
...By the time someone becomes a presidential nominee, he typically has spent several years (if not decades) invading America’s homes on the Sunday morning talk show circuit and explaining himself on an array of issues...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 39
