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« Back to Primary Pandemonium main page    Transcript for: Primary PandemoniumTHINK TANK WITH BEN WATTENBERGPrimary Pandemonium #1127 Feed Date: September 25, 2003 Charles Cook and Norman Ornstein Opening Billboard: Funding for this program is provided by... (Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. Every four years, Republicans and Democrats each choose one person to run for President of the United States. A series of primaries and caucuses winnows down an often-crowded field of candidates to determine the nominee. It is a chaotic and mystifying process at best. Does the system help pick the best candidate? Do a couple of small states ultimately determine who gets to run for president? Is there a way to reform the primary process? To find out Think Tank is joined by: Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of The Cook Political Report, a Washington publication read and re-read by political experts; and Norm Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of The Permanent Campaign and Its Future. The Topic Before the House: Primary Pandemonium, this week on Think Tank. WATTENBERG: Uh, Norm. Charlie. NORM: Hi Ben. WATTENBERG: Welcome to Think Tank. Uh, Norm, you wrote some time ago uh, comparing the primaries to a rollercoaster, which is a long, slow ride up and then this sudden and abrupt movement uh, to a finale. Is that still the way you see the process – I mean these democrats have been running now what, for about a year? NORM: Yeah, uh, a lotta them for a year; some for longer than that but it – it really is – it’s this process where if you remember from uh, the days when you rode rollercoasters, it seems like forever to get to the top and then you’re plummeting down losing the contents of your stomach uh, in an abrupt shift and here we go with this process that seems interminable until you get to January. And now the way they’ve dealt with it, compressed it, it’s boom, boom, boom and it’s pretty much over. Uh, and for most a these candidates there’s a level – has to be a level of frustration not only that you spend much of your time raising the money, but you’re out there laboring away day after day doing everything you can and here we are, couple a months before the process begins, two thirds of Americans spontaneously couldn’t name any of ’em... WATTENBERG: Yeah. Is – is – is that what you find also basically, that it – people have not really tuned in? CHARLIE: Well they haven’t, but – but it almost doesn’t matter because right now – I mean the only things I think that really matter are Iowa, New Hampshire and money. And that uh, you know, seven out of... WATTENBERG: And – and media and polling. There are... CHARLIE: Yeah, but those are sorta means to an end, but – but you know, seven outta the last seven republican nominations have gone to the person that won Iowa, New Hampshire or both. Uh, six out of the last seven democratic nominations have gone to someone who won Iowa or New Hampshire or both. Ten out of the last major party nominations have gone to the person, nine outta ten that raised the most money during the year before the presidential election. Uh, you know, I think that we’re gonna have – I think we will have an excellent idea who the nominee’s gonna be by you know, within a week or two of February third. Uh, January twenty-seventh is the New Hampshire Primary. Uh, you know there used to be five-week gap between Iowa and New Hampshire. Now it’s uh, from the nineteenth through the twenty-seventh and the next week February third is uh, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, uh, Missouri, maybe another state or two and then it sort of widens back out. WATTENBERG: Yeah, and – and – and – and – the irony is that they used to say that if they closed it up so much it would make it harder for a unknown to build up a uh, uh, a process where he got better known and of course with Howard Dean exactly the opposite has happened. He was unknown and he – well we’ll talk more about him later, but – but uh, exactly the opposite happened. Charlie: Right, I mean the more people, the process becomes condensed, the harder it is for someone to break through but Howard Dean demonstrated you can break through six, seven, eight months uh, you know, long before the first caucus or primary, so uh, you know, the system has a way of working. Norm: The problem with – now with this uh, uh, condensed process as much as anything is that if you stumble early it’s like a hundred-yard hurdle race instead of like a steeplechase. You know, in a steeplechase it’s uh, several miles. You fall into one of the uh, pits, you can get up, brush yourself off and make up ground. If you stumble on a hurdle on a hundred-yard or hundred-meter uh, race, you’re dead. So now what’s happened is we’ve got this ironic twist that they better known candidates who figured that they could just breeze through early using the cloud of their recognition, their money, the sense of an exorability find themselves behind and are afraid that they could get blown out in one a these first two symbolic contests making it almost impossible to cover ground again. WATTENBERG: Charlie, could you explain for our viewers the difference between a primary, a caucus and I guess the third categories are super delegates. Is that right? These – these would be the actual people who would vote in a open convention of which we have not had one for about a hundred years, but... CHARLIE: Well, the super delegates are uh, members of congress, governors, and other elected and party officials that are automatically... WATTENBERG: But not all of them. There are...they’re picked by a formula. CHARLIE: Right, right. And they’re automatically delegates to the convention. WATTENBERG: And they’re not pledged to any candidate? CHARLIE: Right. Right. Now they may be completely supporting somebody, but they’re not picked because they’re a Dean person or a... WATTENBERG: On – on – on the other hand if – if their state went for Lieberman or Dean or Gephardt, it – it would be hard for them to go against that... CHARLIE: There’s some pressure. Yeah, there’s some pressure to do it. Depends on how – how strongly they feel about it, but it was uh – it was sort of an answer, there was a feeling that after the McGovern commission there was a feeling that we went too far one way that uh, that elected officials went from having too much say in the old days to having not enough say. WATTENBERG: And – and – and – and what percentage of – of the uh, delegates are super delegates... CHARLIE: Between a quarter and a third now. Uh, and – it’s...it’s supposed to be a leavening mixture where you get some experience and you don’t allow a party to be taken over by people who may have no rule in the party or who may be too ideologically extreme. NORM: It’s – it’s gradually edged up...the percentage of – of all the delegates. Then our primary’s just a regular old election like people are used to except that uh, you know, in most states it’s just people that are in that party or that... WATTENBERG: And is traditionally very low turnouts? NORM: Uh, yes. Yes. Very, very, very low but – and – and depends on you know, Iowa, New Hampshire, obviously or – or New Hampshire would be obviously a lot higher than later on because people of New Hampshire sort of get it; they understand. They’re, you know, people in these early states, they’re like the screening committee and they take it very seriously and they uh, they’re pretty diligent about going and hearing each of the candidates a couple times and asking questions and going’ up looking ’em straight in the eye. It – it really is a fairly impressive thing to go – go to these states and watch it work. Uh, so it’s – it’s a combination of all three become the delegates at the – at the conventions. WATTENBERG: So – the – the – the big changes in the last – since the last uh, presidential election are the compression of the dates and the rules about money. Is that right? Norm: Yeah. It’s – it’s mostly the compression of the dates and it was a deliberate move on the part of the Democratic Party hierarchy to uh, knowing they were running against an incumbent president to try to merge as early as they can with a consensus nominee to have a single voice for the party, uh, up against the president and to uh, bind whatever wounds there are to build towards a convention uh, where you’ve got some unity. It doesn’t necessarily work that way, though. These rules uh, still uh... WATTENBERG: I never knew these rules…comes up with rules... Norm: No, and – and you know, I could make a case – I could at least weave a scenario that’s not a crazy scenario where nobody in this field emerges uh, strong enough and each has just enough money to carry on for awhile; where you could have ambiguity maybe even four or five candidates going into the convention – something they never anticipated, we haven’t had since 1952 uh, convention that went to a second ballot uh, but it’s at least possible. One distinction we – we should make here for people is that there are caucuses where – where people don’t go to the polls and vote; they go to gathering places and – and uh, kind of reason together. Uh, they don’t choose delegates. They actually choose a group of people who go to the next stage and the next stage to choose the delegates. But what’s also important to remember here is that the number of delegates in Iowa where you’re – you’re choosing it three levels before you get the delegates. In New Hampshire where you choose the delegates but they’re a tiny fraction, but their importance is huge because there are winnowing in/winnowing out states. You move from that point to states where the delegates really matter. Where if you win uh, some a these states or you win a – by a significant of margin then you get a huge windfall in terms of delegates, but if – you have to get to that point first, and uh, that’s where the screening committee notion Charlie mentions comes in. WATTENBERG: I remember, I think it was also ’76, nobody had ever heard of the Iowa Caucuses…was just you know, was one a those things and uh, Carter lived there basically for six months and I was working for Senator Scoop Jackson at – at the time and his – and the day after uh, the Iowa Caucuses all of a sudden every newsstand in America – U.S. News, Newsweek and Time had Jimmy Carter’s picture on it. It was a million - million dollars – ten million dollars worth of free publicity. How do you run against, you know three colored pictures of Jimmy Carter on – on every newsstand? Charlie: He basically had open-field running out there. Nobody spent remotely the kind of time that Carter did and that – but it was such a surprise for a former governor from Georgia to win Iowa that it was huge. You know, the difference today is that Iowa’s no secret and so they’re all over Iowa like a cheap suit. And so there – there really isn’t a breakthrough place and that’s what’s so remarkable about a guy like Dean catching on is he did it with a – without sort of a breakthrough state or event or anything um, and that’s sort of why it was I think so interesting to watch. Norm: Iowa of course was a loophole. New Hampshire had started this first in the nation primary; has built into its state law that it will proceed any other primary; guards that status uh, zealously to say the least and the two parties... WATTENBERG: Which – which tells you how gutless the two parties are. They take this tiny, little state and – and they say, 'We’re going’ first and nobody will challenge that.' It’s really – it’s really uh, bizarre when you think about it. Norm: Yeah. There’s a – there’s a good reason to have some small states where you can do retail campaigning. But it’s also good to rotate them around. WATTENBERG: And – and – and – and there was good reason when it was a long process, that you could say, 'Okay, you did New Hampshire, it was a small state...' Norm: You have some preliminary... WATTENBERG: Yeah, but now a week later the whole thing – or two weeks later the whole thing’s over. Charlie: I would argue if you rotated it around, though. I think it would take a number of years before people in a state would kinda figure out their job. I mean, that’s the thing about these people in Iowa and New Hampshire. I mean they really do shop around; they really do spend time listening, watching the candidates, and you know, you could just pick uh, Delaware or some other state... WATTENBERG: Kind of like democracy or something... Charlie: Well – well you know it’s the way it ought to be of people listening to every candidate two, three, four times and asking ’em their own questions and then sort of sitting back and thinking 'okay, who do I really want?” It’s kind of a quaint notion and I – I went from being a critic of Iowa, New Hampshire and their roles to…I’m very supportive of it. I think it’s a very good thing. I wouldn’t want big states or new states necessarily to step forward. And sure, they’re not representative but um, I – I think they take it very seriously... WATTENBERG: I mean they’re both basically all – all white also. Charlie: Yeah, but they do a pretty – I think they do a pretty good job actually. Norm: Well, it – it – it – it’s worked. Of course what happened in 1976 is that as much as anything the press corp. was looking for places where you could make judgments early and – earlier and earlier and pushing it back and now what you find in the…at this particular stage is the candidates are not running to reach the electorate as a whole. The polls don’t mean very much; the candidates who lead in the polls now are ones with name recognition as much as anything else. You’re trying to reach the money-raising audience; you’re trying to reach the press corp. to get buzz that suggests that you’re a serious candidate which in turn means that people will give you money; you’re trying to raise momentum and a level of excitement and also position yourself ideologically and otherwise in the field for when this starts and you’re trying to set expectations so that if you perform at a level that where you don’t win necessarily, uh, but where you do well enough that you can emerge as the winner in the game of expectations and of course the classic here is Gary Hart. You mentioned uh, Carter who figured out Iowa and won Iowa. Gary Hart in 1984 finished third. Walter Mondale, who everybody thought was the overwhelming leader and was, got over fifty percent of the – uh, support in the Iowa caucuses. Next came none of the above at about nineteen percent and then Gary Hart at sixteen percent. But because he beat all the other candidates and that became the alternative to Mondale and nobody thought he was gonna be anywhere close to uh, uh, being ahead of the others...he emerged as the winner and it made his campaign in a huge way. WATTENBERG: Let me ask a question. Charlie, I think you’ve o - opined about it and perhaps, Norman you have as well. It – it said this year that – that – that this year the uh, uh, the primary voters are polarizing, going out to the extremes uh, more than ever before and consequently uh, they will have a greater say in who the nominee will be that you would likely to get uh, a uh, a more extreme nominee. On the other hand every four years uh, Karlyn Bowman who was the opinion editor of the American Enterprise Magazine – was a good colleague of Norman’s and I – every four years we sit down and with the New York Times at the end of the primary season takes an aggregate poll of all the primary voters of all the states and it says here’s what they think about gun control; here’s what they think about abortion; here’s what they think about tax cuts and everything else...and what is so astonishing is – is that the difference between people who regard themselves as liberal, moderate or conservative is so small. And as even not a huge difference on some of these issues between liberals uh, between democrats and republicans. The – the – and – and – and it’s right there in black and white and yet every campaign [clears throat] is sorta predicated on – on – on the idea that there’s – that – that it’s the party activists, the ideologues who will dominate the uh, the process. CHARLIE: Well I think there’d been a buzz about this going on for a few months and then a week or two ago uh, Adam McGerney of the New York Times wrote a very interesting piece about this and – and – and it – the idea is that through most of the ‘90s the focus was on the – the – the swing voters, the peo – the voters that are between the – the two 40-yard lines, the classic bell curve but that – the – that liberals are now so, so, so energized and turning out in bigger numbers and conservatives on the republican side are turning out in general elections are just so mobilized, so polarized that their – their turnouts coming up and that the independents and sorta soft, you know, conservative democrats/liberal republicans – they’re – they’re – they’re fairly static but relatively speaking they’re coming down in influence and the idea is that we may be entering – entering into an era where it’s an election between the two-party bases and not the swing voters that Bill Clinton went after in 1992 and went after in 1996. Um, and – and I’m not sure I’m - I’m prepared to say you know, this is so, but I do find both parties bases phenomenally motivated uh, and – and that um, that starts pulling candidates those ways. WATTENBERG: And – and – and – in this sense, in this election um, Bush would have an advantage because he is not being dragged right or left by his – his – his base because he doesn’t have a primary to run in. NORM: Let me offer a couple caveats here. First of all, much of what Charlie’s been talking about is a general election strategy. That’s what’s different. It’s not the primary strategy. It’s that we – for a long time we thought of uh, the uh, this anomaly that we had a congress that was increasingly polarizing, almost nobody in the middle. Well the country still resembled a bell curve and it may to a – that distinction still exists but at the ends of the bell curve uh, anything other than within that the two 40 yard line uh, areas, they’re becoming more partisan, more roiled up, more angry and now instead of simply aiming right at the middle and even in a general election the two parties are aiming at their bases and George Bush doesn’t have to go through a primary process, but he’s predicated his presidency and it’s part of the reason why democrats have such an animas towards him on securing his base and re-securing his base - it’s one a the reasons why... that uh, basically uh, the tax cut issue he you know, couldn’t abandon it even if uh, fiscal situation changed because he can’t abandon his base right now. Uh, for democrats and republicans running for nominations ever since we had the emergence of a primary process that became the prime element of selecting those nominees, they’ve all had the dilemma of moving left for the democrats, right for the republicans to secure the activists and then moving back to the center. What happened in 2000 interestingly is that for the republicans who felt this great anger towards Clinton and Gore, they channeled that anger into a desperate desire to win and so they picked a George Bush who had the image of a compassionate conservative... many of those very core conservatives bit their tongues while he used moderate language on abortion and things because they desperately wanted to win. The interesting question for democrats now who feel that same anger towards Bush is whether they’re gonna go for a nominee who hedges his bets a little bit, or go for somebody who makes ‘em feel good even though it’ll increase the chances that they’ll lose. WATTENBERG: Does it make any sense now – now that we’ve compressed these primaries to talk about wouldn’t it be a good idea if we stretched out these primaries? I mean there’s always new rules coming in and [stutter] is that something that’s in play or we’re into a – a – an era of early compressed primaries. What these people will do for eight or nine months between the end of the primaries in – in March and – and in November election I have no idea but they’ll figure out something I guess. Charlie: Well I think we’re in an era of that but I thing one thing that – that democrats did that maybe they shouldn’t have done is remember in August of 1999 you had what nine, ten republican candidates running. Uh, I mean remember the, you know, John Cassick and Alan Keys and Gary Bauer, I mean, Elizabeth Dole and Lamar Alexander. That was a very – that was a big, big, big field. But then they had the uh, the straw poll – the Iowa straw poll in Ames and that in effect culled the herd and that took it down to a more manageable half dozen or so – or fewer, I can’t redeem – maybe five or six just coming out of that so that by the time... WATTENBERG: Just on the basis of a poll at a county fair or something? Norm: Right. But the thing is it was everybody knew in advance, you worked state as hard as you could and the people that couldn’t get a threshold level of support at this straw poll basically dropped out so that by the time you got to the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary, you had a manageable number and I think by banning these straw polls I think democrats may have made a mistake. Norm: There will always be processes – informal or formal to winnow down the –the field. Uh, and some of them are gonna be uh, the uh, caucuses and primaries. Some will be other events, maybe even engineered by the media to – to serve this purpose. I’d like to see this stretched out a little bit simply because what can happen here is that a very good candidate who could capture broader support may get inadvertently winnowed out because that candidate has a particular problem in Iowa or New Hampshire. One of the things that happens is if you don’t like ethanol, you can forget about Iowa. Uh, and a candidate who might have a strong base of support in minority communities, a Hispanic for example, is not gonna be able to make it in New Hampshire. You wanna process that in fact requires retail voting [stutter] or you wanna process that requires retail politicking where you have to get down there and actually meet face to face with voters and where you show your stuff. You want something that shows how you can survive under stress and under a bunch of different conditions. You want a variety of debates. But you want this process where candidates come under heat where you can get by some of the preliminaries and then really see who can manage under the great pressure. Now the way this thing works with this great compression is that you may end up with a couple have people winnowed in and everybody else winnowed out and only then do you realize you winnowed the wrong people in. WATTENBERG: Let me just ask a – a – a final question here. Um, at the end of the day you’re gonna have an election between a democrat and a republican. Uh, the economy’s either gonna pick up and do well, uh, or it’s gonna stay down and get worse. Uh, what we’re doing in Iraq is either gonna be terminated or getting better or getting worse. Some – some certain things are – are – are – are gonna play out which we cannot foresee now. Is basically what’s gonna happen, all things being equal uh, that the 2004 presidential election will be a referendum on the incumbent. They say “Bush, good; Bush, bad. Fifty-one percent, he wins; forty-nine percent, he loses.” Is – is that – at – at the end of the day in this circumstance are we talking about a referendum on the incumbent? Charlie: Yes. If – if I had a choice of knowing one of two things: who are democrats gonna nominate or what’s the economy looking like in the second quarter in the middle part of next year, I’d rather know what the economy’s looking like. And if I had a choice of knowing who the democratic nominee is gonna be or what’s going on in Iraq next year, I would rather know that. And the way I look at it is a three way. People are either inclined to reelect the president; they’re inclined to vote against him or it’s either yes, no or maybe. And if the answer is yes on reelecting George Bush, it doesn’t really matter who democrats nominate. And if the answer is no, it doesn’t really matter who they nominate. And it’s only if it’s maybe. WATTENBERG: Unless he’s somebody way over the edge... Charlie: Well and they’re not gonna, I mean, you know, Dennis Kuchinich is not gonna win the democratic nomination. But – but – I – I – I – I really think that the circumstances drive seventy, eighty percent of this equation of economy, Iraq and – and maybe if there’s an act of terrorism you know, what was it? Did it seem preventable? Not? Something like that. WATTENBERG: Yeah the terrorism is a real wild card, I mean, you – you --you could have uh, - uh – uh, a terror episode a week before the election and then all bets are off. NORM: We’re – we’re in an event-driven world now and it’s likely we’re gonna have a few mood swings based on events between now and the election. But when an incumbent is running it’s always a referendum on the incumbent. The first question voters are gonna ask themselves is does this guy deserve another four years? And as Charlie said, if the answer’s yes, the identity of the opposition doesn’t matter. If it’s no it doesn’t matter very much. WATTENBERG: And it’s running about even now, isn’t it? Charlie: Yeah. Well he’s now actually uh, even a little bit behind uh, it’s been a... WATTENBERG: Depending on the poll. There’s different polls. NORM: The – the – the uh trend line hasn’t been good for him. If the answer is no, you do get to that second question which is really does the other guy get over the bar of measuring up? What about the devil we don’t know? Remember in 1980 the answer to the question does Jimmy Carter deserve another four years was a resounding “No”. But, because people had questions about whether Ronald Reagan was too much of a risk, Carter actually led in the polls right up until the one debate between the two of them couple of weeks before the election. Reagan got over the bar and then it widened out and he won going away. CHARLIE: They saw those two men standing next to each other and decided that just as Norm said, that – that – that Ronald Reagan met the threshold. WATTENBERG: On that note uh, Charlie Cook, Norman Ornstein we thank you for joining us at Think Tank and thank you. Please remember to send us your email. That’s the way we try to make our program better. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg. Announcer: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better, please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 1219 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Yank, visit us online at pbs.org and please let us know where you watch Think Tank. Funding for this program is provided by... (Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. 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