Gonna be an exhausting campaign
Kevin Drum has a great post up delineating the barbs and counter-barbs between the Bush and Kerry campaigns since Super Tuesday made Kerry the de facto nominee. There’s been a fair amount of cross-fire for one week — and reading between the lines, Kevin already seems exhausted by the campaign. This leads me to wonder ...
Kevin Drum has a great post up delineating the barbs and counter-barbs between the Bush and Kerry campaigns since Super Tuesday made Kerry the de facto nominee. There's been a fair amount of cross-fire for one week -- and reading between the lines, Kevin already seems exhausted by the campaign. This leads me to wonder how the Feiler Faster Thesis will operate with eight months to go in this campaign. The thesis, to reiterate, is:
Kevin Drum has a great post up delineating the barbs and counter-barbs between the Bush and Kerry campaigns since Super Tuesday made Kerry the de facto nominee. There’s been a fair amount of cross-fire for one week — and reading between the lines, Kevin already seems exhausted by the campaign. This leads me to wonder how the Feiler Faster Thesis will operate with eight months to go in this campaign. The thesis, to reiterate, is:
[P]olitical trends that used to last for weeks now last for hours. It’s like watching the 1984 campaign on fast forward, except that the calendar still drags on into early June, meaning there’s room for plot twists we could only dream of in 1984.
Feiler’s implication is that campaigns will have constant twists and turns. There’s another possibility, however — if there are no external motivations for changes in strategy, voters could get bored fast. That may be the case here. According to USA Today, the extent of party polarization in this election is at a historic high (however, as Eric Weiner points out in the Los Angeles Times, America is actually not politically polarized compared to other countries). The extent of polarization means there’s a low probabilty of public opinion dramatically shifting one way or the other. Given that the two candidates are pretty close in terms of support, and the stability of that support, there may be no change in the relative position of the candidates for quite some time. Which means there’s no incentive to change strategies for the near future. Which means the campaign could get old fast. I stress “may” because there are always exogenous shocks to the political system, so in all likelihood this situation won’t last for 8 months. However, the Feiler Faster Thesis suggests that it will feel like eight months. UPDATE: Hmmm…. this is interesting, and would certainly change the dynamics of the race (link via InstaPundit). ANOTHER UPDATE: Josh Marshall advances the “exhaustion” meme.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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