Though nearly two years must pass before Americans can vote on the next president of the United States, the 1996 election campaign is already well under way.
As a result, Americans once more are being treated to another display of a tiresome political travesty that would be much more sensible if only the run for the White House were reduced from a marathon to a sprint.Consider just a few of the inanities now on view, with the promise of more to come:
- Already at least four major Republican leaders - Cheney, Kemp, Bennett and Quayle - have announced their withdrawal from the 1996 race even though they never were formal entrants.
- Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole has been busily campaigning in New Hampshire's primary even though he doesn't plan to announce his presidential candidacy until April 10.
- As usual, the New Hampshire primary is being treated as a major political event for no better reason than that it's simply the first in a long series of such hurdles for presidential aspirants.
To put the 1996 presidential charade in perspective, keep a few points firmly in mind:
First, the importance of the New Hampshire primary is greatly overblown. What happens there is anything but an indication of things to come. If this primary were truly a bellwether, the Oval Office would now be occupied by Paul Tsongas, the last big winner there, not Bill Clinton. New Hampshire is anything but a microcosm of the nation. In a multicultural country dominated by urban areas, New Hampshire is small, rural and almost all-white.
Second, following the New Hampshire primary, another 36 presidential primaries and 15 state caucuses will be held in about as many different states and territories on about as many different days. The list keeps getting longer and longer. As a result, various presidential aspirants get dragged more and more away from their regular jobs, which often involve conducting the daily business of national and state governments.
Third, one cure for this needlessly long process would be a system of regionwide primaries that could be completed in a few weeks rather than the many months now consumed by presidential primaries. The South already has taken just such a step by consolidating several state primaries into a single regional one. Now other regions should follow suit.
Fourth, even if more regional primaries are held, still other methods of shortening the presidential election campaign should be pursued. Just how much shorter should such campaigns be? Well, it regularly takes the British only four to eight weeks to conduct a national election campaign that in America consumes at least one to two years.
Aren't the British campaigns shorter only because England is more geographically compact and culturally homogeneous than the United States? What a lame excuse! As a case in point, consider Canada. Like the United States, Canada is far-flung and reasonably diverse. Yet Canada manages to complete its major election campaigns in only eight weeks or so.
The trouble is that as American campaigns get longer, they also get more expensive as well as more tiring for the candidates and the voters, too. As the campaigns drag on, candidates tend to look for something new to say even at the risk of taking more extreme positions.
No wonder that at least one poll shows 73 percent of the public thinks U.S. presidential campaigns are too long. Of those who feel that way, 80 percent favor federal laws to limit the lengths of the campaign period.
What's needed is a little healthy competition between the two major political parties. Democrats and Republicans have been trying to outdo each other by re-inventing government in terms of making it smaller and more cost-effective. Now how about re-inventing the presidential campaign by making it shorter and cheaper, too?