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« Back to Picking A President main page    Transcript for: Picking A PresidentTHINK TANKSaturday, January 22, 2000 ANNOUNCER: Funding for Think Tank is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. Front loading, cross over primaries, caucuses, soft money, the presidential selection season is upon us, and all eyes are on the White House 2000 horse race. But, how does a candidate actually win his party's nomination, what are the rules behind the political game? We've been hearing bits and pieces of information on television, and in the editorial columns, but in the next half hour we are going to try to put this whole crazy quilt together. Joining Think Tank to shed some light on the American nominating system are: William Mayer, associate professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston, and editor of In Pursuit Of The White House 2000, How We Choose Our Presidential Nominees; Ronald Walters, professor of political science at the University of Maryland and author of Black Presidential Politics in America, A Strategic Approach; and Elaine Kamarck, executive director of the Visions of Governance For The 21st Century research program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a top policy advisor for Gore 2000. The topic before the house, picking a president, this week on Think Tank. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: The 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was marked by riots and unrest. Many young people, women and black minority Democrats claimed they were left out of the party's decision making process. They said, the party bosses manipulated the outcome. Ultimately they took to the streets in protest. In the wake of the 1968 convention, the Democratic National Committee established the McGovern-Fraser Commission, originally chaired by Senator George McGovern to reform the nominee selection process. The commission and its successors required that the states have explicit written rules for choosing their convention delegates. New rules also called for proportional allocation of delegates, rather than the winner take all system that had been prevalent in the past. The reforms prompted new state laws, many of which reformed the Republican nominating process, as well. Since these reforms the number of states holding open primaries instead of closed caucuses has skyrocketed. In 1968 there were 17 Democratic and 16 Republican primaries. But, this year 40 states will hold Democratic primaries, and 43 will hold Republican primaries. As states struggle for influence in the nominating process, the primary season has been truncated. The majority of both party's convention delegates will have been selected and allocated by March 7th, five full months before the national party conventions. How will Al Gore, George W. Bush, Bill Bradley, John McCain and the others fair in this year's fast paced, complex, and chaotic season. For answers and explanations, we turn now to our expert panel. And let's just do a series of questions, and get some answers out there for our wonderful viewers. How important is this idea of front loading, of moving the primaries toward the earlier part of the year. Elaine Kamarck, if you could begin? MS. KAMARCK: This is probably the most front loaded season we've had historically, although the trend has been in this direction, as you know, for some time, Ben. And what's interesting about it is that we used to write -- I wrote my doctoral dissertation, Bill has written, we've all written about momentum in presidential primaries. MR. WATTENBERG: Big Mo. MS. KAMARCK: Big Mo, and when I first wrote about momentum it was a phenomenon that would occur over a period of four or five months, you know, one set of primaries to another, to another. And this kind of front loading means there will still be momentum certainly coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire, but to a certain extent it all happens at once. It's almost like we have a national primary, which is an idea that's kicked around for many years. MR. WATTENBERG: Is this good or bad, Ron? MR. WALTERS: I think it's probably bad, primarily because when you look at the ability of the average citizen to have an understanding of the process, and the issues, and to have some of the time of the candidate vested on them, it's impossible. If you have a state, for example, like California, that moves its primary up, it's a big state, it costs a lot of money to campaign the state, because you have to cover a lot of people with your issues. You move that up, and you put it where you've got all the other states, it means that you have this tremendous challenge of how do you get your message out, how to people really understand who you are. MR. WATTENBERG: It advantages the well known and the wealthy candidates. MR. WALTERS: Already, that's right, those who already have a presence and have the ability, the financial ability, to actually campaign simultaneously in a number of places. MR. WATTENBERG: I was looking through the calendar, am I correct that after Iowa and New Hampshire on the Democratic side there's a full month before New Hampshire? MS. KAMARCK: There's a full month. MR. WATTENBERG: How much? MR. MAYER: About five weeks. MR. WATTENBERG: About five weeks, so that's -- you have these two showcase primaries, and the Big Mo either builds or doesn't build, and you have some time. MR. MAYER: that one decision by New Hampshire, New Hampshire was originally going to go in late February, has really made it very difficult to say how front -- has sort of, I think, scrambled the extent to which this year is front loaded. It is front loaded once you start at March 7th, but in fact this gap after New Hampshire is really kind of unprecedented. MR. WATTENBERG: But, that is true only on the Democratic side. The Republicans then go immediately, what, to Delaware, South Carolina, Michigan, and then they pick up -- MR. MAYER: Even they have a fairly relaxed schedule up until March 7th. They've got only three or four major events after New Hampshire. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Now, we've raised the question of money. It was said earlier in the year that, well, nobody could touch Bush, nobody could touch Gore because they have all the money. How important, once you reach a certain threshold, the way John McCain and Bill Bradley have, how important is money in this system? MR. MAYER: Well, I think it's -- the unavoidable fact is if you want to run for president in a country that has 280 million people I think it's very important. It is -- I'm not sure that -- the threshold I actually think is quite high, and I'm not sure that McCain has, in fact, reached it yet. MR. WATTENBERG: But, more or less unknown candidates, like Bradley and McCain were able to accumulate substantial amounts of money, to give them the ability to run, which was not necessarily expected. MS. KAMARCK: I think the real question, and this year will be a good test of it, because George Bush has so much money, the real question is not how much money do you need, because I think there's a consensus that you need to be able to raise about $20 million to be kind of a credible candidate. I think the real question is going to be, what do increments above that do for you. If George Bush gets upset by John McCain, and manages to either have to fight for the nomination, or even loses his nomination, I think we will have learned that very, very large amounts of money don't, in the end, overcome advantages like momentum. And that I think will be one of the most interesting things about this season. MR. WALTERS: Well, I think one thing here is important with respect to people who are unknown, people who actually need to increase their name recognition. You're talking about Bradley for example in the South, you're talking about McCain in the Northeast, they need money, because one of the things it does is to help them field an organization. So it's not just television, it is the ability to compete on the ground and make yourself known. And you can't do that without substantial amounts of money. So one of the things it buys you is the ability to put a field operation into play, which helps you become more well known. MR. WATTENBERG: How important, really, is this organization, you hear, he's got organization, I mean, how do you organize 270 million people? I mean, is that sort of -- it's particularly if you take a place like California with 35 million people, the 7 or 8 huge media markets, nobody is going to organize that. You're going to put your money on television, you're going to get a lot of the so-called free media. Are we -- is this just sort of some relic in the closet? MR. WALTERS: I don't think so. Let me just say that there is a combination here of the people that you pay for that are in your organization on the ground, but you don't depend upon those people if you've got elected officials, for example, who may have endorsed you, they use their campaign organization. So the party puts money in, soft money, and that has an effect. MR. WATTENBERG: You worked on Reverend Jackson's political campaign. My sense is that that was not an -- and he did very well, particularly I guess in 1988, and that was not because of organization, that was because he caught a media wave and he had apparently something to say to a lot of people? MR. WALTERS: Not really, if you look at Detroit and Virginia, for example, the ability to have an organization in those states, and to win those caucus states is extremely important. So in those states you're talking about organization. MS. KAMARCK: Well, and I think it depends a little bit on the size of the state. Clearly, organization is very important in caucus states, but it's also in small primary states. MR. WATTENBERG: Somebody define caucus, Bill? MR. MAYER: Caucus is one of two mechanisms that are used for selecting delegates. In primaries it's an election, people walk in and they elect delegates. In caucuses they are essentially town meetings held in every precinct, people show up and what they elect are delegates who then go on to a state or a district convention, and it's only there that the actual numbers -- the actual delegates are selected. MR. WATTENBERG: Unlike a primary election, where you go into a booth and cast a ballot, and it takes five or ten minutes, you end up at a caucus spending the whole evening, and you vote in public, is that right? MS. KAMARCK: That's right. MR. MAYER: There are a couple of differences, they last longer, you vote in public, and one of the other huge differences is the turnout. Typically, primaries have a turnout somewhere between 20 to 30 percent. Caucuses with the single exception of Iowa, typically have a turnout of about 2 or 3 percent. MR. WATTENBERG: I mean, this could -- Iowa, Elaine you don't have to answer this, because you have a candidate running and it's coming up. MS. KAMARCK: I love Iowa. MR. WATTENBERG: I'm sure you do. But, the Iowa caucuses have always sort of reminded me of the Leningrad primary in the old Soviet days. I mean, you have to stand up and say, this is how I vote. Well, I mean, that's not a real election, is it? MR. WALTERS: Yes, in a way. MR. MAYER: It's not as -- I mean, it's not an election, but it is an exercise -- the notion that democracy only operates when you do it in secret is, I think, certainly something that I disagree with. MR. WATTENBERG: You disagree with that? MR. MAYER: Well, town meetings -- MR. WATTENBERG: A secret ballot, what could be more -- MR. MAYER: Secret ballots are appropriate in some circumstances, but they aren't appropriate in Congress, they aren't appropriate in town meetings, usually, they weren't considered appropriate in Athens, I think it's a little bit -- MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. We hear a lot about the role of party bosses, so-called. Is that still in play, or is that another relic? MS. KAMARCK: I think that's another era. I really do think that's another era. I don't know of very many people, particularly in a presidential race, who can deliver blocks of votes for a candidate in the way that I think you and I think of, say, Mayor Daley in Chicago, the previous Mayor Daley being able to deliver. I think it's a bygone era, with TV and lots of media, I think that people make up their own minds who they're going to vote for, for president. MR. WALTERS: I buy that, because when you look at the system under which the bosses operated, a lot of them were caucus systems. And if you're in Detroit and you had to go vote at UAW union hall, you were very circumspect who you voted for. MR. WATTENBERG: With Bill's non-secret ballot. MR. WALTERS: It was the same thing with Daley, who often in his precincts had policemen standing there, that gave you a sort of sense of realism about casting a vote. So this whole boss system has been democratized by the passage of some of the laws that you talked about earlier, the democratization of the primary system, and this has had a tremendous effect on dissipating the power of bosses. MR. WATTENBERG: You know, the fable the legendary Bob Strauss was asked, this is really a couple of decades ago, whether he as 'a party boss' could deliver the vote. And he said, I can't even deliver my wife's vote, I mean, it's really been somewhat of a fable, I think, all along. MR. MAYER: I think that's in general true, but I think endorsements of party leaders major government officials, are still important in a couple of indirect ways. They give you credibility, both with the voters and with the media. They help in terms of your fund raising. And I also think that the one group whose endorsement may be especially important are governors, because governors often do have something of a skeletal organization around them, and in a state like New Hampshire, for example, I think the endorsement of the governor can often be a valuable prize to get. MR. WALTERS: But, that's very different from being a political boss. MS. KAMARCK: That's right. MR. MAYER: I agree completely on that score. I agree. Bosses in the old sense -- MR. WATTENBERG: But, you could be both, you can be an elected -- Mayor Daley was an elected mayor, and he was 'a party boss'. MR. MAYER: But, I agree, you can't deliver. No party leader can deliver in the way Mayor Daley could. MR. WATTENBERG: In George W. Bush's case, his whole candidacy was really developed, and energized, and created in the Republican Governor's Caucus. MR. MAYER: And on the Democratic side I think all of the institutional support that Gore got had a lot to do with scaring a lot of other Democrats out of the race. MR. WATTENBERG: Well, let's go to another question that always comes up. How important are these endorsements? I mean, the answer in the negative is President Muskie. I mean, he had all the endorsements, and he got creamed. So how important are the -- I mean, Elizabeth Dole just recently endorsed George W. Bush, does that mean anything? Is anybody going to go say, well, Elizabeth Dole endorsed him, I'm for Bush over McCain, because Elizabeth Dole or anyone else? I mean, the governors are sort of separate, because they may be able to deliver a working organization. But, other than that does it matter? MS. KAMARCK: I think they're important in this new system, I think they're important in a different way. I think endorsements are important because they give voters cues about the candidate, and what people like about the candidate. So when a candidate gets supported by people that he or she worked with in the legislature, or by his or her fellow governors, what it's saying is, okay, this person has the respect of their peers. And I think it makes a marginal difference in terms of conveying that the person is solid, you know, part of the trouble in every presidential race is some candidates have to get over the presidential threshold. There are some candidates in the Republican race this time who clearly are not getting over the threshold of being credible as president. And I think what endorsements do is they say, okay, well, this is somebody who's credible, who's respected by their peers. I'm not sure it does much else. MR. WALTERS: I disagree with that assumption. I think you're right about the symbolic value of endorsements. But, there are some endorsements that are real. For example, if you look at labor, the kind of endorsement that labor gives leads to bodies in the field, manning telephones and those sorts of things. And you find that among a lot of politicians. The other, of course, if you look at the Democratic side -- MR. WATTENBERG: The National Rifle Association, something like that. MR. WALTERS: The NRA, a lot of these groups that are sort of people oriented, and have a vast network of operatives, you want to get those. MR. WATTENBERG: Pro-choice, pro-life, both, I guess. MR. WALTERS: That's right. But, the other one I started to say was -- had to do with super delegates on the Democratic side. If you look at the endorsement of many of these people, they lead to votes. And, as a matter of fact -- MR. WATTENBERG: To delegate votes? MR. WALTERS: Delegate votes. MR. WATTENBERG: This is, in brief, in the Democratic side at least, all the members of Congress, all the Democratic governors, and all the Democratic -- MR. WALTERS: Big party officials. MR. MAYER: All the members of the Democratic National Committee. MR. WATTENBERG: What are there, about 800 appointed delegates, and they vote with no reference, necessarily, with how their state voted. MR. WALTERS: That's right. And one of the candidates, who shall be unnamed, now has about a quarter of them locked up. So that's very -- MR. WATTENBERG: More than that, if it's vice president unnamed. MR. WALTERS: More than that? MS. KAMARCK: The unnamed vice president has more than that, we're not supposed to be partisan. MR. WATTENBERG: What does he have, about, out of the 800 something like 600? MS. KAMARCK: He has a lot of them. I'm not quite sure, but he has a lot of them. MR. WALTERS: I meant a quarter of the entire delegates needed. MS. KAMARCK: I see. MR. WALTERS: He has far more of the super delegates. That gives him a tremendous head start in this process. MR. WATTENBERG: Give us the but, Bill. MR. MAYER: The but is that I think whether -- to begin with, that only gets you a quarter of the way. And I think in the end what will really be decisive in this election, as in previous ones, is what happens in the primaries and caucuses. I think it's most unlikely that if Bradley should win a majority of the votes in the primaries that all of those super delegates that are now in Gore's camp will stay there. I think instead a lot will come to him and say, in one way or another, listen, Al, we liked you, we supported you, but the voters didn't and we've got to abide by that verdict. MR. WATTENBERG: We have been talking about what viewers might have been hearing on television, or in the newspaper columns. Now, I want to ask you about something that they will hear, I will certify here and now that the week before the primaries when you start actually grilling the pundits and the election experts they're going to say, well, it depends n turnout, right. That's the classic electoral scam. Now, how does that work in primaries? I mean, you do not have huge percentages of the population coming out, do you? MR. WALTERS: No, you have about one-third of the electorate that you're going to have in the general election coming out in the primary. And so it's representative, but it's tough to extrapolate from the primaries. MR. WATTENBERG: But, in other words, if only 50 percent of the eligible voters vote, this is a third of the 50? MR. WALTERS: It's about a third, that's right. MR. WATTENBERG: So it's 15, 16, 17 percent, something like that? MS. KAMARCK: They are low turnout elections, primaries are. And of course, some states you have to be a registered Democrat or a registered Republican to even be able to vote in the first place. So that shrinks the universe even more. So these are low turnout elections, and what it tends to do is, if you have a particularly intense base of the party that's for one candidate or another, that can certainly help that candidate in a primary in a way that it may not help that candidate in a general election. MR. MAYER: Though, I think most of the evidence recently suggests that presidential primaries are reasonably representative of the party membership as a whole. I mean, that was one of the great fears originally. And I think most of those -- there are some differences at the edges, but basically they are reasonably representative. The caucuses are not, the caucuses are clearly unrepresentative. MS. KAMARCK: That's changed over time, because if I remember the early work by Lengle (sp) and Schaeffer on this, in '76 the primaries really didn't look like the general election. And over time, and I think as more people got used to this new system, the primaries got closer in the demographic profile to the general election. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Now, let's go around the room, the end, let me ask one question, let me get a brief answer. There have been these massive changes in how we select a presidential nominee, driven by this history that we saw at the beginning of the show. Has this been a salutary development for our democracy? MR. MAYER: Well, I suppose -- MR. WATTENBERG: That means good. MR. MAYER: Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: I always have to remind my academic friends of the big words that I use. MR. MAYER: I was going to say that it's brought good and bad. I think it's allowed more people to participate. I think it has had a lot of very negative consequences. It has made the races longer. It has, in an indirect way, it's responsible for front loading. I think it means that institutional parties aren't as important. Having said that, I don't mean to suggest that you could simply turn the clock back. But, I think on the whole, I'd say the changes have been more negative than positive. MR. WALTERS: More positive than negative. I think that when you look at, at least the Democratic party, that scenario which goes all the way up through the Jackson campaign, you've had tremendous openness in the Democratic party that you would not have had if you hadn't had rules to that effect. And so I would say that they have had the impact of bringing far more people into the process, or at least allowing that to happen. I am not one who believes that simply by tinkering with the rules that you can affect that. And so I believe that there are far many other factors responsible for participation than tinkering with the rules. MR. WATTENBERG: The old Mayor Daley always used to say, you write the rules, I'll win the election, and he did. MR. WALTERS: He did it, yes. MR. WATTENBERG: Elaine, good or bad? MS. KAMARCK: I think it's been good. I mean, it's hard to imagine in this day and age an election process where it's controlled by a small group of self appointed people. I mean, I think that just the modern -- MR. WATTENBERG: But, they were not really. I mean, that was an anti-Humphrey myth, that these were self selected. I mean, they came up through the electoral process, they were indirectly represented. MR. MAYER: Mayor Daley was elected six times. MR. WATTENBERG: Yes, they were indirectly representing the voters. MS. KAMARCK: My only point is that I think that people in this day and age feel that they have enough information to make their own decisions, and not delegate those decisions to somebody, even somebody who was elected. MR. WATTENBERG: I agree with Ron and Elaine, that this has been essentially a positive development, because look, you've got to pick a president somehow, and this is as much fun, it's a little crazy, as any other way. And it does give people a certain feeling that no matter who it ends up with, at least there was a process, and if I wanted to I would have been able to play. Okay. Thank you, Bill Mayer, Elaine Kamarck, and Ron Walters. And thank you. We at Think Tank encourage feedback from our viewers via email. It's very important to us. One viewer, Diane in Chevy Chase, Maryland, recently had this to say about our program on Norman Rockwell. Because he was only a wonderful illustrator, his critics have sought to exclude him from the ranks of artists. He who works with his hands is a laborer, he who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. But, he who works with his hands, his head, and his heart, like Rockwell, is an artist. I agree. Thanks for writing. 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 Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20036, or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS Online at pbs.org. And please let us know where you watch Think Tank. This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, in association with New River Media, which are solely responsible for its content. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (End of program.) Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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