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Home > Blogs > Campaigns Don't Count > Archives > 2008 > September > 16 > Entry
Lichtman Logic Triumphs
Good points being made here, in the string below. Glad to see it. I’d like to address some of them, in due course.
For now, though, what’s really on my mind is this (a point I just made in my column for my day job):
Seems to me that what’s happening is the triumph of the Lichtman logic. The strategy of both parties is built around it entirely.
After all, the Lichtman theory boils down to one point, pretty much: History shows conclusively that when things are going badly enough for the country and the government, the presidency will change parties.
That’s because independent voters will decide that the status quo in government isn’t good enough and will demand, yes, change.
It’s all about change.
So if you’re Barack Obama, you present yourself as the change option. And if you’re John McCain, you do everything you can to separate yourself from the incumbent, to say that your party is starting out new and that those old people in Washington better look out.
Some people will say that the Republican politicos didn’t need Allan Lichtman to tell them that McCain should run away from Bush. Bush is unpopular; end of story. But consider this:
In 1952, Adlai Stevenson was in much the same position as John McCain today. He was the nominee of the party that held the presidency, but he was not the incumbent, and the incumbent was decidedly unpopular.
The Democrats had held the presidency for 20 years, but were enmeshed in scandal and an uninspiring war, Korea. And they were just seeming old hat.
So nominee Stevenson had to run away from President Harry Truman, had to represent himself as an agent of “change,” just as John McCain is running away from President George W. Bush. That’s obvious, right?
Except that Stevenson didn’t do that. (You can see his convention speech at www.americanrhetoric.com. It’s a short speech.)
Stevenson insisted that “change for the sake of change” has no merit. Try to picture McCain saying that.
And, as for the Democratic scandals, all Stevenson said was that there was no reason to believe that the party couldn’t put its own house in order “without (its) neighbor having to burn it down.”
So much for change.
Adlai Stevenson was a pretty smart guy, and he was surrounded by the best political people of his time. And yet he didn’t arrive at the “change” formula. Neither did Hubert Humphrey in a similar situation in 1968.
Somebody had to lay out how things actually work. Lichtman’s work is familiar to the politicos; it has influenced others to whom they listen.
Now, there’s one potential problem with this analysis (at least): If McCain wins by running on change, then maybe — contrary to the title of this column — campaigns do count. But I haven’t said anything about McCain winning. I’m just talking about strategy here.
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Comments
By Tom Q
September 18, 2008 12:44 AM | Link to this
The strategy will work for McCain about as well as it did for William Jennings Bryan — who would be the only previous candidate you could cite as precedent for this run-against-your-own-party approach. In Bryan’s case, it rose from a sincere antipathy for the economic policies of the Cleveland adminstration, not mere necessity. But, as Lichtman mentions in his book, it didn’t matter, as voters punished him for the Democratic depression regardless. The Stevenson case is interesting, because you could argue his failed approach was a result of not understanding the Lichtman analysis of the previous ,in 1948. That of course is the one that went in the books as the “surprise” election — the one doomed old Harry Truman salvaged by running such a great campaign (a campaign viewed as nothing special until the started rolling in). Of course, applying the Keys, we can now see that the ‘48 race, though a near thing, always SHOULD have gone to Truman, so the fact that Truman rousingly asserted his Democratic-ness wasn’t the deciding factor. But that wasn’t common wisdom in ‘48 — even pollsters who came up with decent leads for Ike in their final ‘52 adjusted for a “we underestimate Democrats” effect. (Because the last election always foretells the next election. Which is why everyone knows this year’s will be a nail-biter, because “all elections are” — i.e., the last two) Anyway, I’d guess Stevenson probably thought going Harry’s route was his best shot…and there’s no evidence another approach would have done him that much better in the end. Which election result do you think has had a sillier effect on punditry and analysis — ‘48, with its “Campaigning overcomes everything”, or ‘88, with “Negative campaigning always works”?By Martin Gottlieb
September 29, 2008 3:20 AM | Link to this
Too hard a question. Been thinking about it for weeks. =========== I guess what I would say is this: the fundamental problem in both cases was polls. Same this year. Whenever the polls go through one of their burps, that, naturally, is when I get asked whether I’m sticking with the prediction for this year. =============== I’m reluctant to take out after polls because of the potential for misunderstanding. Pollsters really can and do get a good snapshot of what people are saying at a certain time. And politicos have difficulty believing that a lot of people who express a preference still haven’t really made up their minds when a campaign has been going on for the better part of two years. ================ But the truth is that voters come to terms with the need to make a decision on their own schedule. Some won’t be rushed. When they finally decide, and their decision conflicts with earlier polls, it’s inevitable that analysts will assume that what accounts for the change is what’s going on in the campaign. Sometimes, though, it is simply that people have decided that both candidates are capable, and both are flawed. Then the question comes down to whether they want a change or not. ============== Harry Truman’s campaign didn’t do. George H. W. Bush’s campaign didn’t do it. (He was, after all, the same campaigner, with the same team, when he lost in 1992 to a draft-dodging adulterer with a wife who was seen as too abrasively feminist to connect with the American people.) What did it was the natural course of events.By Tom Q
October 5, 2008 10:37 PM | Link to this
Indeed, it’s “polls uber alles” feeling that creates most false narratives in the press. The problem is the belief that every poll at every moment is completely accurate for some phantom election on that date — as if the whole thing was a foot-race, and one candidate or the other is always “ahead” on any given day. Even this year, we have people proclaiming that Obama was ahead until McCain picked Palin, which thrust Obama onto the defensive, until the economic crisis came along to carry him aloft again. The fact that we are now precisely where those us who understand the Keys have long predicted is considered lucky coincidence. And, of course, going forward, “a week is a lifetime in politics, and anything can happen between now and election day”. Wanna bet me, pal? I always thought the ultimate comment on the polling question was an old Saturday Night Live gag — “If the election were held today…most Americans would be very surprised”By Tom Q
October 9, 2008 12:07 PM | Link to this
Just to add: I think it’s officially hopeless to get the mainstream press to ever view presidential elections in Lichtman terms. In the past 24 hours, I’ve heard Andrea Mitchell and Pat Buchanan confidently assert that McCain “was ahead” until the financial crisis hit (Buchanan is certain that selecting Palin was going to win the election for McCain in the absence of the Wall Street mess). And Ron Brownstein — one of the better analysts — said that, while garbage like this Ayers story probably won’t work in this environment, in a peace-and-prosperity election, it still could. Which is again the ‘88 argument — everyone believes the Willy Horton campaign “worked” because Bush got elected. But Key-sers would say, Bush got elected because of the environment, and the Horton stuff had no effect (except maybe to poison Bush I’s presidency). Wouldn’t the Brownstein premise lead Republicans to believe that, if Obama has peace and prosperity (and, presumably, a favorable Keys score) in ‘12, an ‘88 like campaign would defeat him? Could Bob Dole had won if he’d run this year’s campaign against Clinton? They never seem to carry their arguments out to where contradictions set in. It’s like they’ll do anything to hold onto their conviction, that every minute of a campaign is crucial.