Political surprises

One of the minor pleasures of this year’s US presidential campaigns has been the frequent stumbling of highly-paid and supposedly knowledgeable pundits. On just about every occasion they have been completely wrong about what voters were going to do. In the first few primaries, they have been consistently stumped by governor Huckabee, ‘misunderestimating’ his grassroots appeal (as the president might say), then finding themselves at a loss to explain the will of the people. The embarrassment has been wittily described by one blogger as “Huckenfreude (n): Pleasure derived from the outrage of prominent conservative pundits over the rising poll numbers of Mike Huckabee.” but the syndrome has not been confined to his candidacy, or party alone. After dismissing Mitt Romney and John McCain prematurely, commentators have been scrambling to provide a rationale for their newfound ‘traction’, as well as face-saving explanations for why the much-hyped Thomspon and Giuliani campaigns have turned out to be such non-events. The Clinton-Obama horserace has proved equally difficult to handicap, as has the likely role of Senator Edwards in determining the final result. In fact, it appears that neither the wise men of Washington, nor the army of pollsters and consultants that surrounds them during campaign seasons have the faintest idea of what lies ahead.

Fifteen years ago, in a magisterial tome called What it Takes: the Road to the White House, the journalist Richard Ben-Cramer followed the ups-and-downs of six candidates in the 1988 US presidential campaign: Joe Biden, Gary Hart, Mike Dukakis and Dick Gephardt, George H W Bush and Bob Dole. It is impossible to finish the book without admiring the character of anyone who can endure the fatigue of endless press scrutiny, and still muster the staged enthusiasm that every campaign stop demands. In Ben-Cramer’s account, each candidate faces several major crises, some of them deeply personal (Hart is caught philandering, Biden is accused of plagiarism) and has to look deep within themselves to summon the will to keep going. In the end, the race is won not by the cleverest or the most telegenic candidate, but by the one who has the staying power to shrug off the inevitable setbacks, and the wit to exploit the few lucky breaks that come his way. After months of steeplechasing, the presidency goes to the last man standing.

To some extent that has always been the American way, but the press has increasingly focused on the imagined psychodrama of each candidate, instead of matters of policy. This has tended to obscure some important similarities. For instance, there is not a great deal of difference, at the policy level, between the Obama and Clinton platforms, even though the candidates are worlds apart in matters of style. Therefore, what the American public is essentially being asked to decide, at least in most mainstream coverage, is whether they prefer the perceived characters of Senators Clinton or Obama, or the more varied contrasts between Senator McCain and governors Huckabee and Romney. These are dangerously superficial questions for they almost entirely ignore recent evidence of what happens once a candidate is elected. Bill Clinton was a master campaigner who – given the breadth of his intelligence and ambition – managed to achieve surprisingly little in two terms of office; George Bush was all charm and compassion as a candidate but has turned out to be a surly, isolated president. The unknowable private lives of both men ultimately mattered much less than their ability to adapt to various crises and challenges. That is partly a question of character, but it is far more often a question of judicious policy. For too long, America has been enthralled by the politics of the perpetual campaign. It has handicapped political contests as though they were talent shows or horse races and it has raised the personal and financial stakes of a presidential run intolerably high for most citizens to ever consider a campaign. It has allowed politics to become the preserve of pollsters, public relations experts and the ubiquitous spin doctors.

Set against this, there is the rise of maverick bloggers who anatomise, clarify and often reveal the meaningful distinctions between candidates. Anyone who has sat through the mind numbing chatter that ‘the best political team on television’ routinely offers as political commentary will appreciate this development. Instead of obsessing over the odds of victory, several bloggers have dedicated their energies to examining the political process from non-traditional angles, reporting on how the various campaigns touch the lives of ordinary citizens, or fact-checking any off-the-cuff statements that a candidate has made. Much of it is partisan and shrill, but most of it is far more engaging and useful for someone trying to make sense of the process than the mainstream political coverage that keeps making all the wrong predictions. Websites like newassignment.net, talkingpointsmemo.com and huffingtonpost.com have shown that modern political campaigns, despite the huge, unwieldy apparatus that surrounds them, can still be exciting and unpredict-able. The political surprises of the last few weeks have confirmed this view and raised the unusual hope that the American people, in all their stubborn, unpredictable glory, may yet choose the president they want and not the one that the political elites have decided they will choose. That is how it ought to be. Democra-cies should embarrass political analysts, it is a sign of their health. Anyone who has lived under the monotony of elections that are rigged, or captive to racial voting patterns, knows too well the anguish of the electorate that does not matter. America’s peaceful political quarrels, however heated, are a welcome contrast to the chaos in Kenya and Pakistan, a glimpse of the way that functioning democracies can air passionate disagreements without being consumed by them. We have become too used to watching political dramas play themselves out on the streets, how refreshing it is to watch them unfold in the quiet surprises of unpredictable ballots.