Dan Rather EVERY FOUR years, as reliable as the sound of campaign promises and the sight of casually clad candidates downing coffee with 'regular folks' in New Hampshire diners, come calls for the press covering the presidential campaign to focus on the 'issues' instead of the 'horse race'.
This election year has been no different, and for good reason. Election Day 2004 will almost certainly feature stark and important choices about what direction this nation should take in the next four years on virtually every issue, from taxes to health care to fighting terrorism. In a political era of 'triangulation', spin and blurring the differences between one's own agenda and that of the opposition, American voters will need informed, informative and clarifying coverage of where each candidate really stands on the issues they care about most.
OMNIPRESENT OPINION POLLS
And, while there is no joy in writing this, it is true that those of us in the news, your reporter included, too often spend too much broadcasting time, column space and limited reportorial resources following the 'gaming' of the election from the omnipresent opinion polls to the growing trend of reporting on insider subjects such as electoral-vote strategy. We know this, we don't always feel good about it, and with each new presidential election campaign we vow to clean up our acts.
So we in the press went to Iowa prepared to engage caucus-goers on the issues they cared about most. And a funny thing happened along the way: In addition to health care and jobs, what mattered most to Iowa's Democratic faithful in choosing a candidate was 'electability'.
CAMPAIGN SEASON
In other words, in this election year, it's looking as if the horse race is one of the biggest issues. Yes, political-party members, be they Democrats or Republicans, always have and always will want to put forward a strong candidate in a presidential election. But rarely, if ever, has this urge been expressed so early, so often and so self-consciously as it has in this campaign season. What also seems new is the degree to which this phenomenon has reached down to the rank-and-file Democratic voter.
Such concerns were once the province of party honchos, expressed in the proverbial smoke-filled back rooms. Now you can hear mom-and-pop Democrats agonising not about Iraq or the economy per se, but about whether a particular candidate's focus on this or that issue is a winning strategy for taking on President Bush in the fall. On radio call-in shows, Democratic soccer moms and NASCAR dads talk about whether their party should go with Edwards or Clark for a run at the South or pursue a 'no-Dixie' strategy focusing on Rust Belt swing states.
When it comes to politics, it seems as if just about everyone's an insider now, or has an insider's take on the race. Maybe that's because politics itself has been turned so thoroughly inside out. The idea of the perpetual campaign has been with us since at least the days of the Clinton administration, and it means that few, if any, details of policy and governing are undertaken without an eye toward the next election.
Such is the apparent polarisation of the American electorate that, for both major parties, little seems to matter as much as simply winning. Again, none of this is wholly new except in degree. While spirited competition and an eye for the horse race has long been a fixture of presidential politics, it now seems a fixation. And one has to wonder, with long months yet to go in campaign 2004, what effect this fixation will have on our ongoing democratic small 'D' experiment.
Dan Rather is a television news anchor. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
