Joel Achenbach had an interesting item yesterday arguing that the extended presidential primary season has led the candidates in both parties to pander shamelessly, in order to offer more “red meat” to their respective bases. I think Achenbach is only half right.
We’re already deep into Red Meat Season…. It’s no secret that candidates play to the base during the primary season, and that nominees drift toward the center for the general election. But the center has become a killing ground. […]
Only partisans are paying attention, and partisans aren’t political vegans. So anyone seeking the party’s nomination must know how to serve up the big slabs of flesh.
I appreciate that this is in line with conventional wisdom. Candidates want to win their respective primaries, partisans dominate early voting, so candidates have to say what they think audiences want to hear.
Except, in looking at the Democrats’ leading candidates, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama have practically been the models for restraint.
During one recent campaign event, a voter in Iowa noted the record budget deficits generated by Bush’s fiscal recklessness and asked Edwards to respond. An easy one for red-meat politics, right? Wrong. Edwards said domestic programs, not deficit reduction, would be his top priority. He insisted that politicians should be “honest” about the “common sense in the math.”
Hillary Clinton is routinely offered opportunities to denounce her 2002 vote on the Iraq war resolution. Under Achenbach’s model, the senator would quickly pander, telling progressive audiences what they want to hear. She hasn’t.
Obama seems to reflexively reject pandering altogether. Said one constituent, “Obama tells you the hard truths, and other politicians, particularly from Chicago, they tend to tell you what they think you want to hear.” He recently delivered a speech in Detroit on the flaws in the American auto industry, which wasn’t well received — and which the opposite of the “red meat” model of campaigning.
So where’s all this pandering Achenbach is talking about?
In his article Achenbach quotes one example from one Democratic candidate: Mike Gravel. That’s hardly persuasive evidence.
Indeed, Achenbach’s piece is filled with notable examples, but they’re all from Republicans trying to placate the far-right GOP base.
[E]ven the maverick McCain knows where the lines are drawn during Red Meat Season. At last week’s debate, he mentioned alternative energy, and started to say something that began with “s.” Could he possibly have been about to utter the word “solar”? There’s a liberal Democrat word if there ever was one. Verbal tofu! A Republican can’t speak that word, any more than he can announce that, if elected, his inauguration suit will be made of hemp. Luckily, McCain caught himself and talked about ethanol instead.
At one point, talking about immigration, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani used the word “compromises” four times in about 15 seconds — and he wasn’t holding it out as a virtue.
But the classic pejorative for Republicans is “Ted Kennedy.” Hunter, for example, would like to convince the party base that top-tier candidates Romney, Giuliani and McCain all emanate the malodorous and mephitic stench of Kennedy liberalism. Romney, he said, supported a 1994 gun control law advocated by the Massachusetts senator and President Bill Clinton. “I saw John McCain join with Ted Kennedy on the border control bill,” he told me. “I think we need to abandon the Kennedy wing of the Republican Party.”
Said Ron Paul of his rivals, “They’re worried about the immediate next election, which is the Republican primary, and anything they can do to pander, they’ll do it, and they’ll forget about what they believe in, they’ll forget about the Constitution, they’ll forget about building coalitions.”
I’m afraid Achenbach put a pox on both houses, when only one deserves it.