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Left, right and center, Kerry has been criticized for not inspiring enough passion in his supporters, and for not generating widespread enthusiasm for his candidacy in the electorate.
It's a view that has been expressed for months, and it's sorta strange. It's expecting the unproven challenger to generate the same sort of as the proven incumbent, when that rarely happens. Incumbents who can't get people fired up for them personally often lose; challengers can and have won without much more to recommend them than being moderately competent and not being the current guy.
Sure, Clinton's 1992 campaign inspired a lot of people and people recall it as being an election people voted for the challenger, rather than against the incumbent ... Except that if there was really widespread Clinton enthusiasm, the anti-incumbent independent, Perot, would not have got 19% of the vote.
It's a lot easier to recall the Democratic enthusiasm for Bill Clinton after the fact, after he's won. Believe it or not, some Democrats were actually ambivalent about Clinton before he won.
Which challengers, before they won, generated real enthusiasm in the electorate? Certainly not Bush I or II, there was little fervor for 43 before 9/11, and his father, bless him, couldn't even generate enthusiasm once in office. Maybe Reagan, but even then, it's easy to forget that the election didn't break for Reagan until late in the campaign. Some would say Kennedy, but that is the height of projecting the veneration of the [dead] President back onto the candidate. Going further back, perhaps Roosevelt, but it's easy to look good against Herbert Hoover and the Depression.
And I think we can safely say that the losing challengers, by definition, failed to generate widespread enthusiasm for their campaigns, even if they picked up pockets of intense support in losing.
Most challengers win largely because of the faults and failings of the incumbent, not because there is a widespread belief that they are much better. If Kerry wins because he's not Bush, he'll be following in a fine tradition of winning on the other guy's perceived failings. Much of the ambivalence that we see today will be forgotten. Similarly, the fervor that Bush has inspired will dissipate as supporters reconciling themselves to the loss find in the past faults and mistakes they had not appreciated at the time.
Posted by robe0419 at September 23, 2004 11:22 PM