Thanks to the swan dives the pollsters and pundits executed into the empty pool of victory predictions before the New Hampshire primary, the Democrats now can expect a real contest for the presidential nomination. Neither Hilary Clinton nor Barack Obama, nor even John Edwards, will allow polling to force them out now. The self-justifying jabber on television and in the print media has been hilarious. The media and political elites cannot agree on what happened with the polls, other than that they were wrong. Hardly anyone will admit that the game of prognostication is flawed and out of date. The new doubts that are cast on polls constitute a welcome development for all of us who want voters to cast ballots on some basis other than the media's self-fulfilling claims of campaign "momentum."
On the Republican ballot, the most consequential surprise in New Hampshire was a stunning repudiation of the old dictum that "money is the mothers milk of politics," in the famous words of the late Democratic Speaker of the California Assembly, Jesse Unruh. In yesterday's primary, John McCain, whose campaign used up almost all its money by last summer and was nearly broke, defeated self-financed Mitt Romney and the rest of the field, just as penniless Mike Huckabee beat Romney a week earlier in Iowa. Such successive successes for poor-boy candidates was a rare double-whammy. One can think of only a few presidential years--the grass-roots draft campaign that helped Henry Cabot Lodge win the New Hampshire primary of 1964 comes to mind-- where it has happened even in one contest in a primary year, let alone two. Regardless, the dramatic turns in Iowa and New Hampshire now give hope for a marathon race for Republicans this year. It may mean that a wary public will have more time than anticipated to weigh the merits of the candidates, and that's good.
It also could mean a huge invigoration of political participation in America this year, with both parties possibly anticipating conventions where the outcome is not clear in advance. I don't say it's likely. I do say it's possible.
Dare political junkies hope for brokered conventions? How many Americans even know what that might look like? In days of yore, it meant party bosses trading favors and promises to garner enough votes to put a nominee over the top. Think cigar smoke and back room deals. Don't knock that system, it gave us the likes of nominees Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
Today's brokered conventions would be, if anything, more tempestuous, if less smoky. There are far more primaries than in the old days, and therefore many more idealistic candidate-oriented delegates unwilling to compromise. Imagine all those fired-up state delegations elected for Obama, Clinton and Edwards gathering at the Democratic convention, or assorted Huckabee, McCain, Romney and Giuliani delegates being forced to horse trade at the GOP conclave. ("Conclave", by the way, is one of those synonyms that have to be dusted off for covering a real political convention.)
It could happen if there are more surprises and variations in Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina and Florida this month and then in the cumulative outcome of the 29 primary/caucuses held on "Tsunami Tuesday," February 5. All that is required is the failure of one candidate to assemble a delegate majority before convention-time.
(NOTE: Discovery Institute Sr. Fellow Michael Medved, the respected culture and politics author and national radio talk show host, will provide a bi-partisan handicap of the February fun--and the coming political year--at a special Discovery Institute dinner in Seattle on the night before Tsunami Tuesday--Monday, February 4. Tickets are now available.)
We already have the gratifying prospect of the most open presidential nominating season to involve both parties simultaneously since 1952. Back then, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was "drafted" to run against Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, while a number of other candidates (Gov. Harold Stassen of Minnesota, favorite-son Earl Warren of California and a draft committee seeking nomination of another general, Douglas MacArthur) made certain that the convention in Chicago that year would be as hot and steamy as the host-city's summer climate.
On the Democrat side, 1952 saw the elegant Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson--who had the Daley machine's backing as surely as Sen. Barak Obama of Illinois has the support of the new Daley machine today--pitted against the folksy Senate crime investigator from Tennessee, Estes Kefauver. With several uncommitted delegations and more-or-less serious candidates and favorite sons such as Gov. A. B. "Happy" Chandler of Kentucky, Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, Sen. John Sparkman of Alabama and Gov. Averill Harriman of New York, the Democratic race also was wide open when the party met--also in Chicago, a few weeks after the Republicans. Of course, the resulting tickets were Eisenhower/Nixon for the GOP and Stevenson/Sparkman for the Democrats.
I remember it all because I was there, at age 11, more or less on my own, commuting by train and subway to both conventions from my father's home in suburban Des Plaines. (Who would let a kid do that today?) No conventions since have been as exciting for me, or practically anyone else, I surmise. Some years, I grant, had riveting battles--the Democratic convention that picked JFK over LBJ in 1960, for example, or the literally riotous Democratic convention of 1968--but usually the mystery was gone by convention time, and it never was present for both parties in the same year. Not like 1952.
Until 2008, perhaps. One way or another, may many new kids this year open their minds to the possibility of public service after exposure to some genuine political drama. And, as in '52, may it all stay at least relatively civilized.