Dean’s December

Dean’s December

It seems to me that the month of December may prove to have been a defining one not only for candidate Howard Dean but also the Democratic Party. The manner in which candidates respond to unexpected events quite often defines the success or failure of their campaign.

However, in December we had a number of defining events coming together at the same time.

The Gulf war and the state of the economy are the two primary issues that the Democratic Party has focused on but Howard Dean, the frontrunner, had the most to loose with a recovering economy, a Sadam Hussain in custody and a declining unemployment rate. More importantly, what the events of December bring to light is the inadvisability of an election campaign that begins almost two full years before the election.

In the urge to be first and play the role of king-maker, Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona and South Carolina are actually doing the country a disservice in that they play into the hands of an incumbent. Two years is a very long time when it comes to staking out positions of criticism based on current events. In the dynamic world in which we live, the one constant is that everything will change and the common practice of negative, reactive campaigning, whereby the challenger takes an opposite position to whatever the incumbent states and continually casts all actions in a negative framework, is proving to be very questionable.

By coming out against the Gulf war and finding no merit whatsoever in the current administration’s policies, Howard Dean had painted himself into a corner from which he is not being allowed to escape. Claiming that the economy will not improve merely shows a lack of understanding of how the business cycle operates; complaining about poor job growth demonstrates a lack of understanding of how and why jobs are created and by whom. Believing you are scoring points against a fighter who is not fighting back and essentially ignores you, is a sure fire prescription for disaster when ones opponent decides to come off the ropes.

While the federal government is able to mandate finance reform, it is the states that have control over the timing of primaries. There should be no primary prior to April one of an election year. Candidates should not have to declare their intentions more than 10 months before an election. Campaign timing is currently driven by the cable news channels in their endless need to create programming. This time the system is working against the Democrat Party; next time it will be the Republicans.

Because of Dean’s “if you say yes, I say no” approach, he positioned himself as being against economic policies that, in December, are showing themselves to be effective (something they did not appear to be when he opposed them more than six months ago); claiming that Sadam Husain’s capture in December will not make anyone safer (attacks on coalition forces decreased from 40 per day before the capture to 15 per day currently); stating that the stalled unemployment rate was a sign of failed administration economic policy (6% when Dean entered the race; 5.7% in December).

This has been a December that not only candidate Dean should long remember but also one from which both Democrat and Republican strategists need to take note for the future: states would be better to back off from the “First in the nation”, “First in the Northeast”, “First in the West”, “First in the South” mentality and have candidates concentrate on providing a positive vision of their own and not a negative “knee jerk” reaction to the vision of an incumbent.

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