A 36 Day Presidential Campaign? Impossible!

This is something I wrote after the last presidential election. Things have not gotten better.
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When the polls closed on November 7, I thought that our long national nightmare - another lengthy presidential campaign - was over. The events of the past few weeks have proved me wrong. The campaign continues.

Even before the current fiasco, I found this presidential campaign especially interminable. Whether it was the flatness of the candidates or my increasing age I know not. I suspect the campaign of 2004 will be even more so, as the way things are going they’ll begin active campaigning as the next president is being sworn in on January 20, 2001.

At the risk of offending the political consultants and the media who derive so much revenue and story material from the permanent campaign, there has to be a better way, one that is less costly and less time consuming. Over the past few years I have become somewhat familiar with at least one better way – the way practiced by our neighbor to the north, Canada.

On October 22, Prime Minister Chretien announced that a federal election would be held not years hence but on November 27, thirty-six days away. While this announcement was anticipated by many, there was no real campaigning until the day of the announcement. No talking heads on television pontificating about the campaign, no political ads. All the speculation was about when the election would be held.

A thirty-six day campaign certainly dramatically cuts the costs of campaigning. The sixty million dollars Bush had raised relatively early in his campaign would have paid for two national elections of the 301 members of parliament. That is, just a portion of the funds raised by Bush would be adequate for each member of parliament – all 301 of them – to run two separate campaigns. It boggles the mind.

You could argue that a thirty-six day campaign prevents the rise of a previously unknown candidate. There is some merit in that argument. However, the leader of the major opposition party, Stockwell Day of the Canadian Alliance, was really unknown nationally until he was elected party leader earlier this year. He did not need the 2+ years our candidates seem to require to make themselves known, a few months were enough.

How can voters come to know the candidates and the issues in thirty-six days? It’s simple really. In Canada there is a real distinction between political parties and, by and large, members of parliament follow the party platform and/or the party leaders. So, attention is focused more on the party than the person who plays better on television or has a more effective ad campaign.

Had Nader and Buchanan run in Canada, they very likely would have participated in the debates. Sure, you did not see the Canadian Marijuana party at the televised debates, as a party needs to have a base of support of roughly 2% of the popular vote at the previous election. But you had a chance to evaluate five (that’s right, 5) national parties: the ruling Liberals who appear to have the chameleon-like attributes necessary to have been the ruling party in 80 of the last 100 years; the Canadian Alliance, an attempt to reinvigorate the rather conservative policies of Canada’s West; the left leaning New Democrat Party (incidentally led by a woman for the past several years); Progressive Conservatives, who last ruled under Brian Mulroney, a friend of Ronald Reagan; and the Bloc Quebecois, who, while espousing the uniqueness of Quebec and the need for separation from Canada, want Canada to pay most of their bills. It’s quite a change from the vapid, one-on-one Bush-Gore debates.

Yes, we in the States do not have a parliamentary form of government. True, political parties have become anemic and virtually indistinguishable from each other. But I can’t see that the calibre of the presidential candidates produced by the primary system is any better than that produced in the smoke-filled rooms of the past. I haven’t seen a Roosevelt or Eisenhower emerge in the past thirty years. Have you?

Despite the different form of government we can learn something from the Canadian style of elections. At a minimum we can learn to keep it shorter, to get the campaign season back to just that – a season, not a permanent state. Doing so will lower our costs and our boredom quotient. Maybe then we’ll see a growing number of people actually voting for president.