The Benefits of Shorter Campaigns

Presidential campaigns are marathons: They start years before Election Day and proceed through door-knocking, living room meetings, candidate debates, newspaper interviews, leafleting, primaries, caucuses and nominating conventions. It’s not unusual, just a few months after a new president is sworn in, to see a contender stake out a state that holds an early primary or caucus.

Not this year. The late entry of Kamala Harris means her campaign against Donald Trump will last for less than four months, from July 21, when President Biden dropped out of the race, until November 5.

Why, some voters and analysts now wonder, can’t we do it like this every cycle?

In today’s newsletter, let’s consider the benefits of this relatively short contest — and why we might not miss the bloated campaigns of recent decades.

The long campaign

Jimmy Carter, a little-known former governor from Georgia, turned up in Iowa in early 1975 to campaign for the 1976 caucuses. The Democratic National Committee had recently changed the rules after the chaotic 1968 convention, shifting nominating power from party bosses to states like Iowa. Carter’s “presidential aspirations have been considered laughable,” as The Times put it in a story in October 1975. But he won, his first step to capturing the presidency, and created a model for long campaigns that both parties embraced.

There are good things about a long campaign. It gives voters a chance to see candidates up close instead of only in slick political ads. In 2007, I watched Barack Obama linger in a small hall to answer questions until after the last television crew left.