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Home > Blogs > Campaigns Don't Count > Archives > 2007 > November > 27 > Entry
‘Experts’ Still Not Getting It
Just in case you think this blog is NOT really in conflict with the conventional wisdom about politics, here are a couple of examples for you. They are taken from the current columns of two nationally distributed commentators:
1) Clarence Page says:
“Sometimes candidates have been a little too honest. Walter Mondale comes to mind with his famous declaration in his 1984 Democratic convention speech: ‘Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.’ He lost in November because some people, to quote an old movie line, ‘can’t handle the truth.’”
Well, first of all, Reagan didn’t raise taxes. So was Mondale really dealing in truth?
More to the point, though, the notion that Mondale lost because of something he said is amazing.
There was no way on earth the gifted Ronald Reagan was going to be defeated for re-election during “morning in America,” certainly not by some generic senator.
In truth, there was only one moment in 1984 when a Mondale victory seemed possible: It came immediately after the Democratic convention. He suddenly had a small lead in the polls. It went away quickly — that is, things got back to normal — as the Republicans attacked him. They said he would use the new money on wasteful spending that the Democratic interest groups wanted.
When Reagan won big, some people who are fixated on the role of “issues” and campaigns said: “SEE: Mondale’s position on taxes killed him.”
Baloney. The only role of his tax position was to give him a momentary boost; people’s first reaction was to admire his honesty.
Of course, any position a candidate takes on a controversial issue eventually has down sidesl that’s in the nature of controversy. In this case, the Republicans made the charge that was inevitable. Whether inevitable charges work depends upon the underlying circumstances of the year.
Mondale lost when he supported a tax hike because ANY Democrat taking ANY set of positions was going to lose in ‘84, when all was said and done. All that the campaign does is get everything said and done.
2) Bob Herbert, the New York Times columnist, criticizes the Democrats running for president and says:
“Bush bashing is not enough. Unless one of the Democratic candidates finds the courage to step up and offer a vision of an American future so compelling that voters head to the polls with a sense of excitement and great expectation, the Republican Party could once again capture the White House (despite its awful performance over the past eight years) with its patented mixture of snake oil and demagoguery.”
Wouldn’t you think that, in writing that, a writer would want to point to at least one case of a party winning a third consecutive presidential term despite an “awful performance?” Herbert doesn’t.
Might he have pointed to the Republicans in 1988? Well, one is entitled to think that Ronald Reagan’s performance was awful, and should have led to the defeat of George H.W. Bush, if one simply doesn’t like Reagan’s politics. But the facts are that the Cold War melted and the economy took off on Reagan’s watch. Herbert seems clearly to be making the fair point that W has nothing remotely like that to point to.
If a challenging party has a chance to win a presidential election — if people have reason enough to be dissatisfied with the incumbents — it comes up with the right message. There’s nothing hard about that. The party pays the best people to do it, but probably could save its money, being full of experienced candidates. There’s even time to experiment, to see what resonates. Piece of cake. Hillary could do it. Obama could do it. Anybody who wins the nomination has — by definition — enough going for him or her to accomplish the task. The Democrats need to worry more about the circumstances than about the candidate.
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