USA: Campaigning by would-be presidential candidates - full text
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In preparation for the presidential election due to be held in November 2008, candidates wanting to represent the two main US political parties--the Republican Party (sometimes referred to as the Grand Old Party--GOP) of incumbent President George W. Bush and the Democratic Party--had started campaigning to win official nomination by their respective parties. The selection process for both parties involved a series of either primary elections (in 41 states) or caucuses (in 9 states) with the details of procedures varying from state to state. Campaigning by the would-be presidential candidates intensified in November and December in the run-up to the Democratic Iowa caucus, the first session of the 2008 selection process, which would be held on Jan. 3, 2008.
Immediate context
Candidates
Democratic candidates for nomination were:- Delaware Senator Joseph Biden
- New York Senator Hillary Clinton
- Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd
- North Carolina Senator John Edwards
- Former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel
- Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich
- Illinois Senator Barack Obama
- New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
The Republican candidates for nomination were:
- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani
- Former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee
- California Representative Duncan Hunter
- Arizona Senator John McCain
- Texas Representative Ron Paul
- Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney
- Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo
- Former Tennessee Senator and actor Fred Thompson.
The leading contenders were Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, but the campaigns of both had been beset by scandals. McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war (POW), had initially been plagued by campaign finance troubles. A purportedly independent group in South Carolina had run a television advertisement featuring favourable images of McCain. Even though the advertisement ostensibly was not about McCain, it appeared that McCain had allowed the political action group to spend money on what amounted to campaigning for him, hence effectively supplementing his official campaign funds. McCain had crusaded for years against manipulation of political spending rules, and many reforms he had championed had become law in 2002. McCain’s staff vigorously denied knowledge of the adverts.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani faced criticism following the indictment on a new series of corruption charges of Bernard Kerik, New York’s police commissioner in 2000-01, who had served under Giuliani. Kerik pleaded guilty to two counts of corruption in 2006 after making millions of dollars through business connections he had allegedly made through Giuliani, the Associated Press news agency reported on Nov. 8. The latest corruption allegation was that Kerik had misused an apartment intended to house recovery workers near "ground zero", the site of the destroyed World Trade Centre.
On Nov. 8 in Dubuque, Iowa, Giuliani distanced himself from Kerik, stating: "I have pointed out that I think I made a mistake of not checking him out more carefully. But when you balance that mistake against all of the successes that we had and the reality that you make some mistakes and you make some correct decisions, I think the overwhelming record is a record of great success."
Issues
Key issues raised during debates by the contenders for the Democratic nomination reflected the national and international problems currently faced by the USA. The contenders had discussed whether the USA could reduce the number of troops killed and wounded in Iraq and how a concrete plan for withdrawal of forces could be formulated. Obama was one of the few Senators to have voted against the Bush administration’s plan to invade Iraq in 2003. "When I am the Democratic Party nominee, my opponent won't be able to say I voted for this war, because I opposed it," the Nov. 17 Houston Chronicle quoted him as saying.
At a televised debate in Las Vegas on Nov. 16, Obama accused Clinton of supporting--or at least not vigorously opposing--the 2003 US incursion into Iraq. Most members of Congress had voted in favour of the war. Clinton responded by criticising as inadequate Obama’s proposals to extend health insurance coverage.
Illegal immigration was also a topic of debate as candidates compared plans to address the issue of foreigners, mainly from Latin America, living in the USA without having obtained the correct visas and other paperwork, and even discussed whether the USA should issue driving licences to such foreigners.
Ways of extending health insurance to cover more currently uninsured people was also the subject of much detailed examination. It was widely considered that years of double-digit medical inflation had led to unreasonably high prices for health care and medical treatment. It was frequently claimed that the US system of healthcare was more expensive than that of any other country in the world. According to research by the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported in June 2000, the performance of the US health system was ranked 37th of all the countries of the world.
As First Lady during the presidency of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton had formulated a plan to reform the health care system, which failed to win approval in Congress (the bicameral federal legislature). Her current proposals had been revised to include a higher level of control by the private sector.
Republican John McCain promoted himself as a frank and open politician, naming his campaign bus the "Straight Talk Express". He advocated tax cutting, fiscal restraint, but greater military involvement in Iraq and was an opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage.
Rudy Giuliani also advocated cutting taxes, continuing the "war on terror", and maintaining a military presence in Iraq. However, socially conservative Republicans were likely to be wary of him because he had been married three times and was considered "pro-choice" by supporting abortion rights, was supportive of gay rights, and was a proponent of stricter gun control. Nevertheless, religious leader Pat Robertson, had endorsed him according to The Los Angeles Times of Nov. 8.Reaction and outlook
Since his re-election in 2004, President Bush and the Republican Party had been hit by a series of failures. The Republican Party’s popularity was reduced by the lack of success achieved by the occupation of Iraq. The Bush administration’s reported poor response to the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina had also weakened support.
In contrast, the popularity of the Democrats had increased, leading to success in the 2006 congressional elections.
Historical context
In order to select its candidate for the presidential election, the two main parties each held a series of state-by-state elections--either primary elections or caucuses--over the course of several months. Rather than accruing votes, the primaries or caucuses would effectively assign a number of delegates to each candidate. These delegates were committed to vote for their candidate at each party's national convention. The person who accrued the most delegates was therefore guaranteed to win the vote at the party convention. The conventions, usually held in the summer preceding the presidential election itself, had thus become essentially ceremonial.
There were no political parties in the USA until the early 19th century. The early parties had no formal structure for selecting presidential candidates, but by the 1840s the Democratic-Republican Party (the forerunner of the Democratic Party) had adopted a process of choosing candidates during its national party convention. In 1910, Oregon was the first state to hold a primary election and instruct its delegates to the national convention to support the candidate chosen in the primary. Other states subsequently also decided to hold primaries. By 2000 41 states had decided they would hold primary elections.
In 1968, following a Democratic national convention in which the candidate preferred at primary stage failed to win, the Democratic Party decided that primary votes should be binding and adopted a number of other electoral rules and procedures. This prompted many states that had previously not held primaries to start doing so, in order to make participation in the electoral process easier to manage. Republicans also started holding more primaries.
The Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary were traditionally held first by both parties. They often gave an early indication of who had the best chance of eventually winning the party nominations and so were disproportionately influential.
During the 1970s and 1980s, some states started to form geographic blocs to promote regional, rather than purely state interests. The first successful regional primary was Super Tuesday in 1988, in which nine Southern states united to support Democratic candidates perceived as sympathetic to Southern concerns.
Another emerging trend was the holding of primaries earlier in the year. The Republicans announced that in 2008 their Nevada caucus would be held on an earlier date than was traditional, with the Democrats planning to hold theirs on Jan. 19. In order to retain its tradition as the first primary in the country (and as required by New Hampshire law), New Hampshire consequently moved its primaries to Jan. 8. This prompted other states to change their primary election dates for 2008.
Independents and candidates nominated by smaller parties could also contest the presidential election. In recent years, Ralph Nader, originally a Democrat, stood twice as candidate for the Green Party (1996 and 2000) and once as an independent supported by the Reform Party (2004). Ross Perot stood in 1992 as an independent and in 1996 as the Reform Party candidate.
The presidential election itself was a vote by an electoral college of 538 presidential electors. On election day, the voters in each state voted for their members of the electoral college. The number of electoral college members was determined by the number of Representatives for that state in the House of Representatives (the lower house of Congress) plus two for the two Senators for each state. (The District of Columbia had three electoral college members.) As the number of Representatives for each state was determined by population, the larger states had more electoral college votes. The electoral college candidates directly represented particular candidates for the presidency and in most states, the vote was effectively a vote along party lines for a slate of presidential electors, so one party would hold all the votes of the state.
In the rare case of no candidate receiving more than 270 votes (a simple majority), the House of Representatives would elect the president from the three candidates who received the most votes.
