The ‘Permanent Campaign’ = Perpetual

Paralysis
For starters, make House terms four years and junk the primary
system.
By
William A. Galston

Oct. 28, 2014

Campaigning is one thing, governing another. Politicians seek office to advance agendas they lay out
during the campaign. If victorious, they do their best to turn promises into policy. Toward the end of
their terms, the people pass judgment on their performance.
That is the textbook theory of representative democracy. It sounds hopelessly old-fashioned, because it
is. Today, the distinction between campaigning and governing has collapsed, and governing has been
reconstructed along campaign lines, with endless survey research playing a pivotal role. The
consequence for our politics has been catastrophic, and we don’t know what to do about it.

You might think, for example, that next week’s midterm elections would create an interval for serious
policy-making. And they may. But those intent on getting down to work will have to defy a Washington
establishment—including much of the media—that will swiftly shift its focus to the 2016 elections.
Legislators who want to take on tough issues such as immigration and taxation will have to buck
leaders worried about the consequences for potential presidential nominees.

Getty Images

This situation has been four decades in the making. In December 1976, Patrick Caddell, president-elect
Jimmy Carter’s pollster, drafted one of the most fateful memos in modern political history. He
summarized its thesis in nine lapidary words; “Governing with public approval requires a continuing
political campaign.” Four years later, journalist Sidney Blumenthal codified this thesis in “The
Permanent Campaign,” a title that became an enduring trope of political discourse.
This new view of American politics followed the political explosion of the late 1960s and early 1970s,
which led both parties to shift control of presidential nominations away from party leaders toward
popular elections—primaries and caucuses. Jimmy Carter was the first candidate to “come out of
nowhere,” seize the nomination from well-known establishment figures such as Sen. Henry Jackson,
and win the presidency. Mr. Carter would not be the last.
A candidate without strong party ties, elected through a popular mobilization that may prove fleeting,
has little choice but to attend closely to public opinion. He has no other base of support. The
consequence is a shift from strategy to tactics, from future-oriented policies to the daily news cycle,
from the politics of consensus-building to a “war room” approach.

Reflecting on these developments in 2000, political scientist Hugh Heclo asked the crucial question:
Why should we care? His astute answer: “Because our politics will become more hostile than needed,
more foolhardy in disregarding the long-term, and more benighted in mistaking persuasions for
reality.” Sadly, seven congresses and two presidential administrations have done little to disprove his
prediction.
At the risk of sounding hopelessly old-fashioned, I offer a Madisonian reflection: There is a difference
between the vagaries of public opinion and the long-term interests of the people, and it is the task of
representative democracy to reflect that difference. Pursuing the people’s long-term interests may
sometimes require elected officials to disregard the kinds of preferences that the people reveal in
public-opinion surveys or even in elections. Changes in the political system that make it more difficult
for elected officials to give adequate weight to the long-term are changes for the worse, however
“democratic” they may appear.
As Madison insisted, we will wait in vain for public-spiritedness to become a pervasive motive in our
politics. Instead, we must create—and if necessary re-create—institutions that channel human nature as
it is toward promoting the permanent interests of the community. If representative institutions move too
far in the direction of government by plebiscite, we need an era of institutional reform to renew them.
Renewal does not mean restoring the vanished past. It means accepting certain changes as irreversible
and rethinking old institutions in light of new circumstances. Here are three ideas.
First: Whatever may have been the case in the 18th century, today two-year House terms condemn 435
representatives to permanent campaigns. To create more opportunity for governing, we should change
to four-year terms.
Second: Low and variable participation in formal elections increases the influence of plebiscitary
devices such as surveys. To strengthen the former and weaken the latter, we should consider instituting
the system of mandatory voting that Australia adopted nearly a century ago.
Third: Our current presidential nominating system tends to reward candidates who are talented
campaigners. Only if we get lucky do effective campaigners turn out to have a capacity for governing.
Can anyone seriously contend that the ability to win the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary
is a good leading indicator of the capacity to serve as chief executive? The worst system of all is an
unrepresentative plebiscite, but that is what the past four decades have yielded.
It is time for both political parties to reflect on the consequences of the system they have created and to
draw the necessary conclusions. If they are unwilling or unable to undertake this task, it may be time
for the federal government to step in, to the extent the Constitution permits.
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