Nominating a Presidential Candidate
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Humphrey’s nomination divided the Democratic party. Many Democratic
activists had supported “peace” candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy,
who opposed the war in Vietnam.6 These candidates won most of the primaries that
were held, driving President Lyndon Johnson from the race in the process, and their
supporters—already stunned by Robert Kennedy’s assassination—were outraged that
the nomination went to Johnson’s vice-president. The antiwar faction gained the
upper hand in the party and adopted the current process.7 The Republicans already
had been moving toward greater popular participation in their nominating process.
In 1964 Senator Barry Goldwater, an insurgent from Arizona, won the nomination
by edging out New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the candidate of the party
establishment, in the California primary.8
The new nomination process was a fact by 1976, when the previously unknown
Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination. Carter probably was the first to recognize that the new process had transformed presidential politics; in many ways his
campaign became a model for those that followed.
The past two decades have seen much tinkering with the rules, but the broad
outlines of the system have not changed. In 2000 all of the Republican delegates and
about 80 percent of the Democratic delegates were chosen in primaries and caucuses.
(The Democrats generally reserve about 20 percent of their slots for elected officials
and party leaders called superdelegates.) The general pattern today is for candidates to
build extensive organizations in the states where the first caucuses and primaries are
held. Here the emphasis is on “retail politics,” face-to-face contact with voters, which
Visual Literacy
American
Electoral Rules:
How Do They
Influence
Campaigns?
Democratic Dilemma
Can States Adopt Blanket Primaries?
n the 2000 elections, the states of Alaska, California, and
Washington chose candidates for office via what are called
Iblanket
primaries. Any registered voter can participate in
a
such primaries, and all receive the same ballot. The candidates are listed office by office, and a voter can choose
among any party’s candidates for each office to be filled.
Thus a voter could choose among the Republican Senate
candidates, then move to the Democratic House candidates,
then to Libertarian gubernatorial candidates, and so on.
Because such primaries ignore considerations of party membership and party loyalty, they have been called “free love”
primaries: Voters can switch from party to party and don’t
have to make any commitments!
The California parties sued to overturn the state’s blanket primary (which had passed by a popular initiative over
their bipartisan opposition in 1998) on the grounds that it
violated their constitutional right of free association. Lowercourt decisions were appealed to the Supreme Court. In June
of 2000, in California Democratic Party v. Jones, the Supreme
Court overturned the California blanket primary, agreeing
that it violated the parties’ rights of free association.b
Supporters of the blanket primary make three arguments.
First,they claim that it increases turnout because members of
a party with no exciting contests may be drawn to the polls by
an exciting race in the other party. Second,they argue that it
enhances representation because members of the minority
party in a district or state can help choose the majority party
candidate,who is likely to win. Third,they claim that blanket
primaries moderate politics because conservative Republicans
usually win in Republican primaries and liberal Democrats in
Democratic primaries. Allowing everyone into a party’s primary increases the likelihood that moderates can win.
Opponents of the blanket primary argue that it allows
parties to be “hijacked by drive-by voters with no durable
interest in the parties, acting on transitory whims or even
trying to make mischief by burdening a party with a weak
candidate.”c
• Do the goals of blanket primary supporters justify restricting
the parties’ rights of free association?
• Given that two major parties together control the electoral
process, is it right to exclude people who are not party members
(one-third of the voting-age population) from choosing candidates?
a
In California, however, although voters could vote for any presidential
candidate, delegates were allocated in proportion to the votes cast by
party members only.
b
Supporters of the Washington blanket primary believe that the
California decision does not apply to Washington because important
background circumstances differ. In particular, Washington does not have
partisan registration. The case is currently in the courts.
c
George Will,“‘Blanket’ Primary Can Hijack a Party,” San Francisco
Chronicle, May 1, 2000: A23.
283
Nominating a Presidential Candidate
Who Nominates the Vice-President?
Since 1968, one candidate in each party has won a majority of convention delegates
by the end of the caucus and primary season. Consequently, the national conventions
no longer are the important party meetings they were in earlier eras. As we saw in
Chapter 9, they are media events: Party leaders today try to use the conventions to
showcase their stars and rising stars and to unify the party by compromising on the
platform and giving the losers a chance to speak. Of course, having realized that the
conventions now do little of importance, the media increasingly ignore them.
Before the establishment of the contemporary nomination process, the conventions chose the vice-presidential candidates as well as the presidential candidates. The
choice usually was an effort to “balance” the ticket ideologically or geographically,
and the convention often chose the runner-up for the presidential nomination, who,
by definition, was supported by a significant fraction of the party. Today, the choice of
vice-presidential candidates is completely in the hands of the presidential nominees,
although they still attempt to choose a nominee who will help the ticket, or at least
will not hurt it.26 The presidential nominees simply announce their choices, and the
conventions accept them. Sometimes the presidential nominees keep the choice
secret, hoping to inject some excitement into an otherwise dull convention, but in
2000 both Bush and Gore made their choices before the convention. Given that vicepresidents quickly become viewed as serious presidential candidates, the fact that
choosing them has often been something of an afterthought concerns some people.27
(See the accompanying Democratic Dilemma.)
Democratic Dilemma
How Should the Vice-President Be Selected? a
he vice-presidency traditionally is the butt of jokes and
derision. For example, Texan John Nance Garner, viceT
president in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term, once commented that the vice-presidency “was not worth a bucket of
warm spit.” Nevertheless, the office is extremely important.
Under the Constitution, the vice-president is first in line to
succeed the president should the latter die or otherwise be
unable to serve. And this has not been an uncommon occurrence. In just the past half-century, Harry Truman became
president upon FDR’s death in 1945, Lyndon Johnson
became president after the assassination of John Kennedy in
1963, and Gerald Ford became president after Richard
Nixon resigned in 1974.
Moreover, even when presidents survive their terms,
vice-presidents frequently become presidential contenders
in later years. Richard Nixon was Eisenhower’s vicepresident. Vice-president Hubert Humphrey was the 1968
Democratic presidential nominee. Former vice-president
Walter Mondale became the Democratic presidential
nominee in 1984. George Bush was Ronald Reagan’s vicepresident. And Clinton’s vice-president, Al Gore, was the
Democratic nominee in 2000.
Given this history, many are troubled by the seemingly
haphazard way in which presidential candidates choose their
vice-presidential running mates. Some choices clearly have
been questionable. In 1968 Richard Nixon chose Maryland
Governor Spiro Agnew, who resigned in 1973 when faced
with corruption charges. In 1972 Democratic nominee
George McGovern chose Senator Tom Eagleton of Missouri.
When it was revealed that Eagleton had been treated for
emotional problems, he was dropped from the ticket, an
episode that damaged the already struggling McGovern campaign. In 1984 Walter Mondale felt politically obligated to
choose a woman, but the excitement generated by the
choice of Representative Geraldine Ferraro evaporated in
the face of questionable financial dealings by her and her husband. In 1988 George Bush chose Dan Quayle, a young, relatively inexperienced senator from Indiana, who was a liability
in the campaign and thereafter.
Although presidential campaigns have been more
thorough in checking the backgrounds of vice-presidential
hopefuls in recent years, many feel that the process is
unsatisfactory.
• Should the occupant of such an important office be determined
entirely by the personal preferences and political calculations of
the presidential nominee?
• Should the presidential candidate with the second-highest number of delegates in each party automatically be named that
party’s vice-presidential nominee?
• Should vice-presidential candidates be selected via an entirely
separate nomination process?
a
For background see William Mayer,“A Brief History of Vice-Presidential
Selection,” in Pursuit of the White House 2000, ed. William Mayer
(Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 2000), pp. 313–374.
291