Election 2000
In 1960, America experienced a defining election. I was still a cadet at West Point at the time, but I remember the issues: economic recession and the emerging civil rights struggle at home, a rising Soviet threat and an escalating crisis in southeast Asia abroad. The campaign was expensive, hard-fought, and closely contested: a switch of little more than ten thousand votes--representing roughly one-hundredth of the vote nationally--in five key states would have swung the results the other way. But when most political scientists and politicians are asked about the most memorable aspect of the election of 1960, they answer with one word: television.
The 1960 election marked the advent of televised debates between the two major party candidates, and TV's impact was huge. As just about everyone now knows, surveys taken after the first debate showed a remarkable split: Those who heard the debate on the radio judged Richard Nixon the victor, whereas those who watched on television deemed John F. Kennedy the winner.
The introduction of television as a major force in political communications changed American politics forever. Over the last four decades, the candidates who have succeeded on the national stage have been increasingly those who have mastered this powerful medium.
Remember, for instance, President Ford's gaffe in his 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter, when he said that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination? Or Ronald Reagan's gentle "There you go again" rebuke to Carter in their critical 1980 debate? Or Reagan's 1984 turning of the age issue against Walter Mondale, when he quipped that he wouldn't use his opponent's "youth and inexperience" for political advantage? Or Michael Dukakis's rambling answer to CNN anchor Bernard Shaw's question about whether he would still oppose the death penalty were his wife, Kitty, to be raped and murdered? In each case, the candidate who was more skilled before the cameras emerged as the winner of not just the debate, but the general election as well.
This year's election promises to be as defining as the election of 1960. Once again, our nation is at a crossroads. I believe that the direction advocated by the Republican Party leads to the advancement of freedom, increased economic opportunities for a greater number of our citizens, a strengthening of our defenses in the face of intensifying threats abroad, the restoration of constitutional government, and the revitalization of American families and American culture. The other direction, I believe, leads to an ever-expanding role for a more bureaucratized government, a heavier tax burden on America's families, a continued coarsening of the culture, and dangerous vacillation abroad.
For the first time in almost fifty years, there's a very real possibility--in fact, a likelihood, if recent polls are to be believed--that the American electorate will choose to give power to a Republican president and a Republican House and Senate all at the same time. Not since the first two years of Dwight Eisenhower's first term--before most of America's voters had been born--has a GOP White House been able to pass its legislative agenda without relying on the votes of Democrats.
What could a Republican president have accomplished with a GOP Congress in just the last six years? The budget would have gone from deficit to balance to surplus earlier, and a significant share of the tax overpayment would have been returned to the hardworking Americans who earned it. Those taxpayers would have invested and spent their money, which would have improved their lives, but not only their lives. It also would have created more jobs and more opportunities for more Americans, not least for the poor and disadvantaged. A job, after all, is the best antipoverty program ever conceived.
Welfare reform would have passed on the first try, not the third. Tougher laws to protect law-abiding citizens from dangerous criminals would have been put on the books--and enforced. The cruel and unnecessary practice known as partial-birth abortion would have been outlawed. America's position in the world would have been strengthened. And, it needs to be said, Americans would have a president who did not dishonor the presidency and violate his oath of office. They'd have a president deserving of respect.
What will a Republican president and a Republican Congress working together beginning early in 2001 do? They will enact the largest tax cut in American history, safeguarding the fifteen-year-old Reagan boom and increasing the economy even more while at the same time protecting Social Security for our future by allowing America's taxpayers to control at least part of their own retirement investments. America's military strength will be restored, and foreign adversaries will no longer be tempted to test our resolve. Our judiciary will be fortified with judges who respect original constitutional intent, believe in the separation of powers, and uphold the rule of law. Our culture will begin a process of healing and renewal.
As important as this choice may be, scholars forty years from now may look back on the 2000 election and also remember it for something else: This election may witness the beginning of a shift from the era of network television.
Viewership of the three major broadcast networks' news shows has been on a steady downtrend for the last decade and a half, as the viewing public's image of the press has worsened. Over the last fifteen years, the percentage of television news viewers who deem the news media as "moral" has dropped from 54 to 40 percent, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center; those who see the news media as "immoral" have more than tripled, from 13 to 38 percent. The percentage who believe that the news media are "professional" has dropped from 72 to 52 percent, while the percentage who believe that the news media are "unprofessional" has nearly tripled from 11 to 32 percent.
Actually, decreasing reliance by news consumers on the major networks' news programs may be good for Republicans, given that this is where the anticonservative, anti-Republican bias is most pronounced.
Among the key media alternatives has been talk radio, which tends to be conservative or libertarian--openly so, without the pretense of neutrality and evenhandedness that characterizes even much of the most tendentious elite broadcast media.
Increasingly, as well, news consumers are turning to cable news outlets and the Internet. In fact, Campaign 2000 will be the first presidential election covered by a multiplicity of twenty-four-hour cable news stations: CNN, FNS, MSNBC, CNBC, and America's Voice.
The impact is hard to predict. One would expect that more news choices would mean more diversity of coverage--and to some extent that's true: The Fox News Channel routinely covers stories (such as Chinese espionage and the flow of campaign money from Beijing to Democrats) that the elite TV news programs ignore. But one also sees a herd mentality at work, a tendency for the cable outlets to focus almost obsessively on a single story and to amplify that story well beyond its genuine news value.
Of course, most Americans are not watching cable news most of the time. But voters, political activists, opinion leaders, and journalists themselves do watch in disproportionately high numbers--and so its influence is substantial. This represents a challenge and an opportunity that political parties and candidates ignore at their peril. But that's not all there is in this brave new media world. There is also the Internet.
Clearly, the Internet is taking on increasing importance--and it's anyone's guess how powerful it will become by the time the last vote is counted in November 2000. The Internet is introducing a fundamental shift in terms of both communications and organization--the two major functions of any political campaign.
Unlike television, radio, and even the newspapers and newsmagazines, where viewers, listeners, and readers are captive to the choices made by unknown editors, producers, and reporters in distant cities and are required to sit passively and absorb information someone else has deemed important for them to know, the Internet offers interested voters the chance to seek out information aggressively on their own. In fact, a majority of Internet news seekers report that they go on-line to learn more about a news story they first heard about through one of the more traditional news outlets.
This gives political parties and their candidates the opportunity to shape a message that is better tailored to their target audiences, without having to try to squeeze it into a nine-second sound bite for the evening news or even a thirty-second TV ad. A farmer in Nebraska doesn't have to wait to hear what Tom Brokaw has to say about farm policy in a 1:15 segment; he can log on and find out the candidates' positions for himself, at length.
Just as important is the opportunity the Internet offers campaigns to organize their supporters electronically, through the use of what one leading Republican presidential candidate has termed "e-precincts."
Old precinct organization techniques follow a model first laid down more than a century ago by Abraham Lincoln. First, canvass the given area and determine where your supporters are. Communicate your message to them, organize them, and then, on Election Day, make sure they turn out to vote. Since then, get-out-the-vote drives (GOTV in political lingo) have all been based on this simple model. But they were limited by geography. Campaign volunteers had to be physically present in a given area to organize it. The Internet changes that. With the introduction of the e-precinct, a campaign volunteer in California can share her support for her candidate of choice with everyone in her email address book and can recruit volunteers all around the country from the comfort of her own home.
And one more thing makes Internet organizing a tool for the future: It's virtually free. Once a campaign has paid the sunk costs involved in creating its Web site and voter and activist e-mail lists, the only significant cost to maintain the site is the staff hours needed to keep it current. To send e-mail doesn't cost the campaign a dime, unlike television and radio ads and direct mail.
The election this year will be remembered for two things: first, for the political direction chosen by the American electorate as we enter the new millennium, and second, for the role that new communications media and technology will play.
Back in 1960, the introduction of televised debates changed political communication, and the subsequent elections changed America. In 2000, cable news networks and the Internet will do no less. The candidates and campaign staffs who master these new media are most likely to succeed and to have the opportunity to change America's direction as we start a new century--one that Republicans hope to help make very much an American century.
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By Jim Nicholson
=Jim Nicholson is the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Address: Republican National Committee, 310 First St., SE, Washington, DC 20003; phone: 202-863-8500.