The Likeability Factor

There may be an element of post-hoc reasoning to it, but I have a theory that the most likeable presidential candidate wins the general election. That’s because citizens have come to see the president in such personal terms over the course of the past half century as first radio, then television have promoted a direct, seemingly unmediated relationship between the president and the people.

So, moving back through time, the winner of each presidential election since at least 1976 appears to have been the more likeable guy or, in Ronald Reagan’s case, the actor playing the role of the more likeable guy!

Thus, it is a little disheartening that the top two Democrats are John Kerry and Howard Dean. Although Dean has been savaged for his apparently unpresidential temperament, Kerry just seems downright unlikeable. See the article in this week’s Newsweek and the Slate piece on Kerry's "mystifying appeal".

The obvious likeability choice is John Edwards. Newsweek struggles to find anything bad to say about him other than a vague story about him playing hardball with a defendant. See also Slate's treatment of Edwards.

The Latest Polls: Zogby Back in the Fold

While the Zogby poll had shown a tightening race through Sunday, it reverted to the mean on Monday, with results very similar to every other tracking poll, much to the chagrin of polling junkies on the Internet. Zogby’s results, however, point to a last-minute break to Kerry as New Hampshirites supposedly focus in on the electability issue.

Nearly every other poll has the same current standings, but have been more consistent all along, and they are showing continuing growth in Dean support, although it doesn’t look like it’s a strong enough trend for Dean to pull off an upset. The American Research Group reports fairly significant movement to Dean, but Kerry’s support holding.

Kerry is generally in the high 30s, with Dean in the mid 20s, and Edwards trending ahead of Clark and Lieberman in the mid-teens. Clark is on a downtrend, perhaps heading for single-digits, while Lieberman seems to be holding steady at high single digits.

If that basic order holds tonight, and Kerry wins decisively, there all of the sudden will be a lot of talk about the inevitability of John Kerry and the end of Howard Dean (the “2003” candidate). And for all the pre-New Hampshire speculation of a long nominating contest, it may well be over, practically speaking, after next week. There’s no reason for Dean to quit just yet if he finishes a weak second, but there doesn’t seem to be a rationale for how he can climb above the electability ceiling that voters appear to be building above him.

There also will be talk of the end of Wes Clark, although he too seems likely to stay in the race for another week, perhaps in a death struggle with John Edwards for the “Anybody But Kerry” crowd. But if Dean and Clark both stay in for another week, Dean will get his 20% or so, and Clark will split votes with Edwards, leaving Kerry again the victor in at least some of next week’s contests. And those victories will “prove” that Kerry has broader geographical appeal and they will hand Kerry the nomination.

Edwards’ only hope is for Clark to do so poorly in New Hampshire that the general drops out of the race or is so totally written off by the media that he becomes irrelevant. With Dean still in but a widely acknowledged also-ran, and with Lieberman out, which he likely will be after New Hampshire, that would set up essentially a two-man contest between Kerry and Edwards. And given the contrast between Kerry, who can be dull and condescending, and Edwards, who is exciting, likeable, and very smart, the tables could turn.

The other thing that could happen is that Dean could end up very close to Kerry and keep alive his own “Comeback Kid” scenario. That would roil the race because Edwards and Clark would continue to run hard in next week’s primaries, sensing vulnerability in both the putative front-runners.

The Latest Polls: Zogby says Dean Closing In on Kerry

Continuing the trend reported yesterday, Zogby’s latest tracking poll has Dean within three points of Kerry. The catch is that Zogby has tried to allocate the last-minute undecideds based on their responses to a question about which candidate they are leaning toward supporting. He finds 13% undecided, but after the leaners are apportioned to candidates, the undecideds are down to 3%. This all points to the fact that Dean hasn’t closed the deal with a number of undecided voters, but he is trending upward, perhaps headed toward a Clintonesque second-place “Comeback Kid” designation.

Then there is the race for third place. If Clark loses to Edwards, his candidacy could be all but over, even though he will soldier on to the Southern and Midwestern states. Lieberman could be the spoiler. He has been appealing to independents, who can vote in the primary if they are so moved. If Lieberman also beats Clark, then the general would be in big trouble.

The Latest Polls: Kerry Had Better Watch His Back; Lieberman Could Do Some Damage in the Middle of the Pack

OK, so the pollsters don't really know what's going on in New Hampshire, because independents can vote in the Democratic primary and it's been twenty years since there has been a contested Republican primary, so independents have no choice but to vote Democratic if they indeed choose to vote. New Hampshire voters have also prided themselves on making last-minutes choices and throwing the political establishment curve balls, so with that as background, the latest polls:

Most seem to show Kerry with a solid lead over Dean, about 35% for Kerry vs. around 20% for Dean, but the big question is whether Dean will make a last-minute surge. Clark seems to be fading; Edwards ascending, but not all that much. Lieberman coming up a little.

Kerry leads Dean by only 30% to 23% in the latest Zogby tracking poll, with Dean possibly closing the gap. That poll is an average of three nights of polling, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. In the previous poll, Kerry led 31-22, so Dean cut Kerry’s lead. Zogby reports that the Saturday night only portion of the poll showed Kerry leading 28-25. The other thing to note about the poll is that its Thursday portion may have been too early to track reactions to the debate and to Dean’s media onslaught. So, it would not be surprising to see Kerry and Dean locked in a very tight race come Monday, when the Fri-Sat-Sun tracking poll is released.

Clark, meanwhile, is showing signs of weakness, dropping a couple of points since Iowa and certainly not appearing to generate any positive movement. It makes sense because he was positioned as the alternative-to-Dean candidate based on assumption that Dean would win big in Iowa.

Edwards is holding his support, with perhaps some slight evidence of movement up, while Lieberman is doing the same thing. Perhaps impish Joe will surprise by offing Clark. Remember, he is a New Englander; he’s been living in New Hampshire; he is a conservative alternative, and he evinced such genial good cheer in the Thursday debates. Contrary New Hampshire voters may just decide to give him a boost.

As for Dean, perhaps he becomes “the comeback kid” just by finishing a strong second; shades of Bill Clinton in 1992.

For another set of poll results, check out the American Research Group. Same trends, but with actual numbers showing Kerry farther ahead. According to the Times article mentioned above, though, ARG was way off on New Hampshire in 2000.

News Flash: Dean’s Not A Liberal!

See Katherine Seelye’s article in the Times.

Mainly because of his outspoken opposition to the war and his anti-Washington views, Howard Dean, back when he was the front-runner, was branded by the SCLM as “the candidate too liberal to be elected.” It was always a ridiculous charge. Not only does Dean not have 20 years of recorded votes on major national policy issues like Kerry does, he simply was known as a centrist, fiscally conservative during his gubernatorial reign in Vermont. He may have electability problems versus W, namely, how to convince a country that the governor of the second-smallest state in the union should replace a president during wartime, but the Republicans won’t get very far depicting Dr. Dean as an out-of-step liberal. Alas, now that the Times has caught on, it may be too late.

Spotlight, er … Target: John Kerry

After several days of breathless coverage of the new frontrunner, John Kerry, the hammer came down over the weekend with the shocking news that Sen. Kerry is a liberal – and has been for a long time! Not just a liberal – an icky “cautious” liberal, according to a piece by Todd Purdum in today’s New York Times

It’s too bad that the so-called liberal media (henceforth: SCLM, with apologies to Al Franken) doesn’t just designate, say, a one-week period before any of the caucuses or primaries take place, to flay each candidate. That way, voters would learn about candidates’ weak spots well in advance of an election. Instead, the strictures of “objective” journalism dictate that a candidate first has to be able to be defined somehow as a “front-runner” and then has to actually take on criticism from his or her rivals. At that point, reporters not only dutifully report on the attacks, but then they start their piling on with more detailed background pieces like Purdum’s.

Hardly able to conceal their glee at the possibility of facing a “Massachusetts liberal” this fall, the Republicans, in the form of a speech by RNC chair Ed Gillespie, dangled the red meat of Kerry’s voting record in the Senate in front of the rabid-right carnivores attending the Conservative Political Action Committee convention on Friday.

And Democratic rivals, apparently too caught up in looking positive and presidential to confront Kerry head-on, have been priming reporters with background information to be used by the likes of Purdum in his piece today.

It’s a potentially strong claim that goes to the electability question, but it strikes me that Democrats Dean, Edwards, and Clark should have been making it an issue as of Wednesday morning, and certainly at Thursday’s debate. It may be too late to turn the tables on Kerry before Tuesday’s primary.

Bushies love to run against liberals. HW, of course, famously succeeded against the hapless Michael Dukakis, but W also did a fair amount of liberal bashing against Al Gore. And though the SCLM dutifully passed along the inside-Washington line that Howard Dean was too liberal to be elected, it has always been Kerry who is the most vulnerable to that kind of campaign, because he has a nearly 20-year voting record in the Senate to defend.

Also of interest is the fact that Kerry voted against the first Gulf War, which lends some credence to the claim that his vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq in 2002 was politically expedient. In any event, I can see the general election debate over Iraq:

Bush: “Sen. Kerry supported the war, but once our troops were over there and we had defeated Saddam’s army and Sen. Kerry’s campaign was taking flak for supporting the war, Sen. Kerry decided he was against our occupation of Iraq. Whether you agree with me or not, I thought the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do; I didn’t do it for political expediency.”

Kerry (red-faced): “Mr. President, as a combat veteran of Vietnam, how dare you question my support of our troops…”

Bush: “Senator. I honor your service in Vietnam just like I honor the service of those brave men and women fighting in Iraq right now, but when you voted against the appropriation bill last year, you turned your back on them when your campaign started to lose ground.”

Then on domestic policy, it will be “liberal, liberal, liberal.”

Oh, and there is this, possible Bush ad:

Voiceover: “John Kerry’s only experience in the executive branch was as lieutenant governor to …” – cut to picture of Michael Dukakis in the tank.

OK, so the Bushies would have to be pretty desperate to haul out Dukakis-in-a-tank, but I do think they will paint Kerry as an out-of-touch elitist liberal on domestic policy while painting his stance on Iraq as unprincipled.

From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think Kerry will be very good at fending off those attacks. He doesn’t have the pedigree. His toughest campaign for the Senate was against William Weld, not exactly an arch-conservative Republican.

Post-NH Debate

No one had the incentive to attack and everyone needed to come off as presidential. I thought generally Dean came off pretty well, although I'm not sure he should have said "I lead with my heart, not my head." Not quite what he wanted to say. But he was serious, while also showing a sense of humor, and was able to highlight his record as a governor.

Kerry came off simultaneously as weighty and presidential but also as almost a caricature of a politician -- lots of practiced lines and lots of references to "I led the fight in the Senate" on this or that. He has a tendency to lapse into the kind of mealy-mouthed no-content rhetoric that causes people to roll their eyes at politicians. You watch Kerry and you think you're going to get this great charismatic candidate, but he comes off as kind of dull and boring. I also think he's the type of candidate that has a glass jaw; more on that later.

I thought Edwards did well, even though Peter Jennings and Brit Hume played "gotcha" with him on the Defense of Marriage Act. In the first place, it was a pompous convoluted question from Jennings, who acted like he was thinking "if I have to share the questioning duties with these lightweight local New Hampshire TV and newspaper reporters, by God, I'm going to take my time and ask weighty questions." In any event, Edwards seems so ... nice, and he is interesting to watch. There is real charisma there, but the man looks like he is barely old enough to be President, and given the context of this election, it just may not be the right time for a young fresh fellow.

When Clark waits for a question, he seems to have total fear in his eyes! I suppose not a lot of people dare to ask generals very many tough questions, but he looks absolutely panicked. As soon as the question is asked, he relaxes and usually gives a pretty good answer.

Yesterday, was Dean's big media push. He appeared "presidential" at the debate; for those who prefer to judge candidates through the soft lens of TV newsmagazines, he and his partner Judy appeared with dewy-eyed Diane Sawyer and then for the younger more male crowd, he did the Letterman show. All in all, I think it should help him, particularly since Kerry was so boring in the debate.

Greetings to everyone out there in Blog-land. The first two posts are from e-mails earlier this week, and I realized after writing them that rather than spend the next ten months writing e-mails about the campaign to friends, I should just do a Blog and we won't have these long e-mail strings clogging our mailboxes. And, hey, why not make this public while we're at it? It will be interesting to see how many people stumble across it.

Anyway, the basic idea is to raise "talking points" that reflect my take on the campaign and to provide links to key information and insightful analyses.

January 20, 2004

On to New Hampshire:

1. The Clark factor will be interesting. He was setting himself up as the “anybody but Dean” alternative in NH. But now perhaps he becomes the “alternative Dean” in NH.

2. I didn’t hear Lieberman mentioned last night until after 11 p.m., and I had been watching on and off all evening.

3. There’s something about Edwards. I see the possibility there of a candidate who could really capture the imagination of the electorate in the way Clinton did in 1992, but his lack of foreign-policy credentials could be too big of an obstacle to surmount vs. Kerry and Clark, and even Bush in the general.

4. There’s something about Kerry. He has a certain gravitas and the foreign policy credentials to really stand up and fight Bush. But does he have any charisma? Will voters think of him as a craggy, boring New England liberal? Will he look good in the spring like Dukakis did, but ridiculous in the fall? Will he be able to fend off the “Massachusetts liberal” drumbeat?

5. There’s something about Dean. Namely, money. Normally, what has happened in the most recent era, is that an early front-runner can withstand a hit and then recover to win because he has the money to win a war of attrition. But unlike Dean, that early front-runner has also always been an establishment candidate, not an outsider. Outsider candidates who shoot up and perhaps pull off a surprising win can’t capitalize because they can’t turn their success into enough money to sustain their campaigns. So here we have Dean, the outsider but with the money to stay in the race. Still, I think he has to refocus his message and he needs to do it quickly.

January 20, 2004

Some observations on Iowa:

1. Apparently, Gephardt’s last-ditch attacks on Dean, and Dean’s responses, dragged both down and, in a multi-candidate race, ended up benefiting Kerry and Edwards.

2. A related point, Gephardt and especially Dean are “hot” candidates who can burn out with the electorate. Kerry and Edwards, by contrast, are “cool” candidates who come across better on television, if not in person, and inasmuch as the campaign now shifts away from the person-to-person retail politics of Iowa and NH, it should benefit Kerry and Edwards, and hurt Dean. (Did you see their appearances last night? Kerry and especially Edwards, no doubt understanding they were on TV, immediately took the opportunity to launch into their standard “message” speech. Dean spoke directly to the crowd and gave a loud, defiant “let’s move on!” exhortation that never mentioned anything substantive. It may have been rousing in person, but it didn’t come off at all well on TV. I didn’t like it at all.)

3. Dean set the policy agenda of the campaign, and in my mind, has served an important purpose, even if he completely flames out. Before Dean came on strong, the rest of the field was trying to re-run 1992 by agreeing with Bush on Iraq and hoping to fight him on domestic policy grounds. Because of Dean, the rest of the field is now more boldly criticizing Bush foreign policy and making the linkage between that and domestic/economic issues, and are generally more vocal and pointed in their criticism of the administration.

4. The capture of Saddam may have spelled the end of Dean, not because Saddam’s capture proves Bush right, but because it boosted Bush’s approval ratings and drove home the point to Democrats that W may be hard to beat. Hence, the electability issue started to resonate with Iowa voters, hurting Dean.

5. As I watched the two caucuses on C-SPAN, it struck me that even though a lot of people were “first-time caucus goers” – a lot of them appeared to be middle-class, middle-age (or older), middle-of-the-road (ok, they lean liberal) – but clearly of a moderate, middle-of –the-road temperament – not the types to go for Dean, but perfect for the more palatable Kerry and Edwards.