In seven short weeks, the voters of Iowa will go to the presidential caucuses with the weight of the Free World on their shoulders, a sense of duty in their hearts, and strains of "Auld Lang Syne" still ringing in their ears. In seven short weeks, the voters of Iowa will go to the presidential caucuses with the weight of the Free World on their shoulders, a sense of duty in their hearts, and strains of "Auld Lang Syne" still ringing in their ears.
Having repelled a power grab by a bunch of upstart states hoping to expand their influence in the presidential sweepstakes at Iowa's expense, Iowans will continue to have the first say in who the next president will be. But the Jan. 3 caucus date is earlier than ever -- and that means a dramatic reordering of the election calendar.
So already, even before the Thanksgiving turkeys are bought or roasted, before the winter gloom completely envelops us, we are fully into the season of electability. This is the nefarious period during which voters, Democrats in particular, winnow the field of potential presidential candidates to those they like best, then discard those people for someone they think others will like better. The electability debate is often characterized as a nod to pragmatism, a triumph of practicality over ideology, and, of course, it comes with some familiar rituals and traditions, namely: hand-wringing, second-guessing, and self-doubt. This is unattractive behavior, but completely unavoidable.
The early onset of the electability debate was announced in no less august a venue than the front page of The New York Times, which on Wednesday declared: "Polls Find Voters Weighing Issues vs. Electability." The story begins by trying to hint at the calculations involved in the electability equation:
Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire -- the states that begin the presidential nominating battle -- say Senator Barack Obama and John Edwards are more likely than Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to say what they believe, rather than what they think voters want to hear ... But they also view Mrs. Clinton as the best prepared and most electable Democrat in the field, the polls found.
In essence, the best candidate may not always be the best candidate: You may not be able to believe anything she says, but she's the one who can win.
On the Republican side, voters think Mitt Romney is the candidate who most shares their values, but they think Rudy Giuliani may be more "electable." According to the Times, "More broadly, the survey suggests the extent to which Republicans are struggling to balance ideological and pragmatic considerations as they face an election in which many are fearful of losing the White House."
The deformity in the reasoning is obvious, but so pervasive that it is almost pointless to argue against it. And on some level it may suggest that voters are not as ideological as they are partisan, that they would rather win the election than change the world.
Iraq, immigration, Social Security, and health care are all important, but not as important as if your guy or gal can win.
In a business that is so notoriously dependent on guesses and gambles, "electability" looms especially large in the nebulous department.
Sometimes it works. It was electability that plucked George W. Bush from the relative obscurity of the Texas governorship and made him the GOP nominee in 2000, partially in response to the Republican desperation to win after eight years of Bill Clinton.
Sometimes it doesn't. It was electability that propelled John Kerry to the nomination in 2004 when Howard Dean was the one saying what Democrats wanted to hear. Back then, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn told me he knew Kerry had to be the Democratic nominee the minute he saw George W. Bush in his flight suit on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. Kerry's Vietnam service made him the most electable in Clyburn's mind. So Clyburn abandoned his fellow Palmetto State native John Edwards in favor of Kerry.
"My heart was with Edwards, but my head was with Kerry," Clyburn told me.
The heart-head split is a common feature of the electability conundrum. But electability also involves, as in Clyburn's case, perceptions about the presidency, and how close a candidate can match public perceptions of being presidential. Aside from his Vietnam medals (some discarded), Kerry's face looks like it belongs on Mount Rushmore, while Dean looks like a college football coach.
This time around the perception of electabilty ought to be particularly interesting since the leading candidates are a woman, a black man, a Mormon, and a bald, triple-divorcee who was once married to his second-cousin. No historical characteristics of "electability" there.
But maybe the best measure of electabilty is the oldest: The one with the most votes wins. Iowans will begin sorting that out in just a matter of weeks.
