Margaret and I have been wondering about the health of a system that generates presidential nominees based on whether they’re [perceived to be] “electable.” Let’s see — you think Jane Jones would be a better president that Joe Smith, but you cast your primary vote for Smith because you think he’s more electable? Isn’t that the way we get coin flips between telegenic, anodyne lightweights, because everyone decides that other voters are selfish, ignorant, airheads who’ll only vote for a candidate who doesn’t have too much substance or integrity?
As the Fugs song asks, “Was George Washington the lesser of two evils?”
Posted by AKMA at January 20, 2004 09:10 AM | TrackBackThat's the way we demonstrate that we're ignorant airheads. And since all of the voters do that, sounds like the assumption is correct.
Posted by: Will Cox at January 20, 2004 10:48 AMI see some sense in this.
I might vote for the "more electable" party "A" candidate, in order to defeat the party "B" candidate. I do have a fairly strong party preference, so that may contribute to this.
I would not, however, go so far as to vote for a candidate of little substance. I'd like issues, please, image on the side.
Fortunately, I have yet to be in the situation where "would be a better president" and "more electable" applied to different candidates.
Posted by: Wes at January 20, 2004 12:55 PMWe haven't always been faced with a choice of the lesser of two weevils. George Washington was actually elected in 1789 as the least of twelve weevils, since that's how many people received electoral votes in his first run for POTUS. It's also noteworthy that were 12 electoral votes not cast, signifying perhaps that among a field that included Washington, John Adams, John Jay, R. H. Harrison, John Rutledge, John Hancock, George Clinton, Samuel Huntington and four others, there were those who didn't think they had a decent choice.
In his second dust-up in 1792 he was the least of five weevils (the fifth weevil in this case being Aaron Burr who received 1 electoral vote).
While looking this up I discovered that John Quincy Adams received neither the most popular votes nor the most electoral votes in his 1824 campaign against Andrew Jackson, but he somehow was named president in spite of this little problem.
Reminds me of Bush the Lesser in this regard.
Posted by: fp at January 20, 2004 04:31 PMThe only time "electability" is an issue is when the other party's presumptive nominee is seen to be very difficult - but not impossible - to defeat. Nobody argued about whether Kennedy or Johnson was "more electable" in 1960, AFAIK. Nor was electability a big issue for the Democrats in 1976, when Ford was widely (and correctly) viewed as vulnerable due to Watergate and the pardon.
No system is perfect, and it is certainly possible for ours to give us wimps, crooks, or both at once. But it produces reasonably good leaders most of the time, outstanding leaders with surprising frequency, and execrable scoundrels relatively rarely. There are more first-rate Presidents in our history (Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt ...) than there are scoundrels.
Posted by: Christopher Jones at January 20, 2004 05:38 PMHey, Frank, don’be picking on people named “Adam[s]”!
Posted by: AKMA at January 20, 2004 06:05 PMROTFLOL ...
well, smiling with the pleasure of good humored acknowledgement anyway.. SWTPOGHA
There's one simple way to fix this problem, but it will never happen. Ban all political advertising on television. Of course, if in fact it did happen, I think half the country wouldn't even know when election day was, much less who was running. Can you imagine a country where people voted for someone based on how they came accross in print (oh, wait, we had that before).
Posted by: Paul Baxter at January 21, 2004 09:50 AM