Campaign 2012: A political version of 'American Idol'?

DES MOINES – From cafe to courthouse square, a half-dozen presidential candidates are slated to start crisscrossing Iowa on Tuesday in a final burst of the retail campaigning traditional in the state that will host the opening presidential caucuses next week.

But the past year leading up to this moment has been anything but traditional.

Instead of early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina shaping the national conversation — and enabling a little-known candidate such as Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976 or Republican Mike Huckabee in 2008 to quietly cultivate a state and then burst on the scene — this time, the national conversation has shaped the first caucuses and primaries.

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And a string of 13 nationally televised debates has sent candidates soaring and crashing, regardless of how often they've visited Iowa.

The debates, coupled with the way cable TV and the Internet have amplified the distribution of information, have scrambled the race, fueled an unprecedented volatility and altered the attributes on which candidates are judged. A political unknown with a catchy slogan like former pizza executive Herman Cain can lead the field, while the prospects of the nation's senior governor, Rick Perry of Texas, can be undone by an "oops!" moment on stage.

One veteran Republican activist calls it a political version of American Idol. "I really believe this country has gotten very used to multiperson talent competitions that play out on a weekly basis on television," says Tom Rath, a former attorney general in New Hampshire who is advising former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. "It's not Idol, but it's not unlike Idol. Look at the debates: The sets are getting glitzier and glitzier. And look at the ratings they've been getting: People are paying attention."

The Dec. 10 debate in Des Moines, on ABC, drew 7.6 million people, the most of any this year.

Investing time in Iowa — including the long slog for bragging rights that you've visited all 99 counties? Only former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum bothered to do so before the campaign's closing days, and after 97 days and counting in the state, he's still struggling to rise from the bottom of the pack. Investing money here, for TV ads and staff? Forces supporting Perry have been among the biggest spenders, and he trails the leaders.

To be sure, person-to-person campaigning and precinct-by-precinct organizing still matters. The Iowa networks that Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Romney forged in their presidential campaigns four years ago count as major assets now. They could prove crucial in a contest that requires voters to bundle up on a January evening and attend a meeting to support a candidate.

This year, however, that strategy hasn't turned out to be the smart starting point for a campaign.

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who spent much of his campaign time on the Iowa circuit, was the first major contender to drop his bid after he seemed to be getting nowhere. Cain and former House speaker Newt Gingrich rushed to organize only after they had risen to the top of national and statewide surveys.

The role of Iowa as a testing ground where candidates over an extended period of time make their case in living rooms and at Rotary Club luncheons hasn't shaped the contest this time.

"We like to get up close and personal and take a look at the candidates not just one or two times but half-a-dozen times," says Jeffrey Jorgensen, GOP chairman of Pottawattamie County in western Iowa. He had endorsed Cain, who has suspended his campaign, and is now considering whom to support. "We want to speak to them, and we want to ask them questions. We want to personally interview them for the job, basically — "but it hasn't quite worked out this year."

Oversized expectations

The volatility in Iowa and nationwide — seven candidates or potential candidates have led the GOP field in the national Gallup Poll this year — reflects divisions within the Republican Party.

"It's a year when no candidate is able to fulfill the expectations of the Republicans," says Steffen Schmidt, an Iowa State University political scientist who has watched politics in the state for four decades. "You can't be a faith-based Christian social conservative and at the same time also have a nuanced position on how to run for the general election as well as have good credentials to deal with jobs and the economy."

The conservative, anti--big-government Tea Party movement now provides the most energy in the GOP, but in the latest nationwide USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, nearly four in 10 Republicans identified themselves as moderates or liberals. The Republican Party's libertarian strain has provided a solid core of support for Texas Rep. Ron Paul. In Iowa, social conservatives and evangelical Christians who focus on such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage are particularly influential.

No wonder that several candidates have faded under scrutiny, Schmidt says. Expectations are oversized at a time many Republicans fear that failure to deny President Obama a second term would be catastrophic for the country.

In the USA TODAY poll, taken Dec. 15-18, seven in 10 Republicans said they were "afraid" of what will happen if their presidential candidate doesn't win. Six in 10 called the stakes higher than in previous elections.

"Most Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction and they think Obama has led the country in the wrong direction," Terry Branstad, Iowa's five-term governor, said in an interview. He decried federal bailouts, stimulus spending and the health care overhaul. "We don't want to go the way of Europe. People are looking for a new direction."

Branstad says he has never seen a race like this one, with and most voters open to changing their minds even in the campaign's closing days. "People are looking for the perfect candidate," he says. "Somebody does well in the debate and they say, 'Oh, this is the one.' And whoever gets the lead has a barrage of negative advertising and attacks on them, and then they take another look."

One factor contributing to the volatility has been the makeup of the field.

Of the seven remaining contenders, only Romney and Paul have run national campaigns before. Only three (Perry, Paul and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann) are in office now. Three (Bachmann, Paul and former House speaker Newt Gingrich) have never been elected to statewide office.

"We don't have the kind of stable of tried and tested public figures like we had before," says Doug Gross, a veteran of Republican campaigns in Iowa who is unaffiliated this time. "Henry Clay is not in the race." (The 19th-century Kentuckian, who held an array of top governmental posts over four decades, sought the presidential nomination five times and won it thrice.)

That has enabled fresh faces to capture voters' interest — or lose it — when they were introduced to a nationwide audience in the debates.

Bachmann became an instant contender after her strong debut at the first New Hampshire debate, in June. At the same forum, Pawlenty's uncertainty in following through on an attack on Romney undermined his candidacy.

No one has been more bedeviled by debates than Perry. He led the field soon after he announced his candidacy until he stumbled in his first debates. His standing slid, although more confident performances in later debates have helped to begin rebuilding it.

In contrast, Gingrich's prospects took off with a series of professorial elocutions on policy and history at the debates, including a willingness to go after the moderators for asking questions he deemed unworthy. Even after most of his top staff quit and his campaign fell into debt — for a time, his candidacy seemed to consist mostly of traveling from debate to debate — Gingrich managed to rise to the top of the field.

Even so, the perils of a campaign based on momentum over organization were underscored when Gingrich failed Friday to meet the requirements to appear on the primary ballot in Virginia. A relentless assault from his rivals has narrowed his lead nationally over Romney, and he has fallen behind Romney and Paul in Iowa surveys.

Voters acknowledge that the debates have shaped their views. Two-thirds of Republicans and independents who lean to the GOP surveyed by USA TODAY said the debates have had an impact in deciding how to vote in 2012. Nearly one in four said they have had a major impact.

There is also broad agreement on the winners and losers. One-third of Republicans said the candidate who had done the worst job in the debates was Perry.

And the best? More than four in 10 said Gingrich had fared best. That was double the percentage who picked Romney.

For many Republicans, performance in the debates has become a proxy for the most important question in 2012: Which candidate could best debate — and defeat — Obama?

Republican voters are more focused on electability than Democrats. Thirty-five percent of Republicans said they would prefer their party nominate the candidate who has the best chance of winning, even if they disagree with him or her on issues; 24% of Democrats feel that way.

Sixty-two percent of Republicans and 70% of Democrats said they'd prefer a nominee who agrees with them on almost all the issues they care about, even if he or she didn't have the best chance of winning.

'See-with-your-own-eyes' election

"The debates have essentially replaced the traditional paid media campaign," says Phil Musser, a Republican consultant who was a senior adviser to Pawlenty. "It's made this the see-with-your-own-eyes election. With institutional mistrust at an all-time high, people are angry at the Congress, angry at the government, angry at the economy, and frankly they're unwilling to trust anything that they don't actually see for themselves. The debates have filled that void."

The televised performances on stage have empowered voters nationwide to rate the candidates at the expense of such traditional arbiters as the political parties and the activists in early states.

Not everyone sees this as a positive development, especially if it sets a new model that persists in future campaigns. "The purpose of the small state lead-offs is to take an intense and focused look at these candidates and what they're made of, and not allow themselves to define themselves based on 30 seconds of TV at a time," says Gross, who led Romney's 2008 campaign in Iowa and is unaffiliated this time.

"It's good if you're good for 30 seconds. It's better if you're good for four years."
source:usatoday.com