Strategy, Not Drama, in ‘I Intend to Run in ’08’

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: December 27, 2006
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 25 — On Thursday, John Edwards is planning to announce what has been clear to much of the world since the end of the last presidential election: He is running for president in 2008. A similar declaration is expected shortly from Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, followed, in all probability, by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

For all the very orchestrated hoopla about to be heaped on American voters over the next few weeks, presidential announcements have become, more often than not, vestigial remnants of the way presidential politics were once conducted (or at least the way they are remembered).
Rather than being big moments in which candidates lay down ideological markers and discuss what they would do as president, announcements are more of a pro forma exercise of the obvious. Campaigns grab at a political opportunity for attention with events that, ultimately, are of relatively small consequence.

For Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Romney, Mr. Edwards and Mr. McCain, it would be noteworthy, after all they have done, if they were to announce that they were not running. Mr. Edwards’s 2008 campaign arguably began on Election Day 2004, when he lost as his party’s vice-presidential candidate.

But if formal announcements hold little drama, they are hardly meaningless. Their timing and staging reflect how presidential politics are changing in the United States in 2008, and offer a glimpse at problems each candidate faces one year before the Iowa caucus. The announcements are an insight into how campaigns are adapting to the pressures of the Internet, the demands of fund-raising, the broad range of avenues for reaching voters and mobilizing supporters, and the particular dynamics of the ’08 campaign, crowded with candidates, many of them celebrities.
Most strikingly, the announcements are being made extraordinarily early. In the 1992 cycle, Bill Clinton did not formally announce his candidacy until October 1991, three months before the Iowa caucus. When Mr. Edwards announces, with a round of morning talk show interviews and a press conference in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, he will become the third Democrat to enter the race formally.

As of now, about a half-dozen candidates have formed presidential exploratory committees, a step that allows them to raise money as they take soundings about a race. And Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, told reporters Tuesday that he planned to set up his exploratory committee next month.

In this crowded field, few candidates in either the Democratic or Republican Party can afford to wait and risk watching a rival pick off big-name elected officials, campaign consultants and contributors. And since aides to many of the candidates say they are likely to bow out of the public campaign finance system and raise money on their own, there is pressure to start raising money now.

“Timing is becoming much more of an issue,” said Joe Trippi, who managed the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean. “You’re seeing it now in the urgency of these people to get out and announce.”

Understandably, candidates are going to do what it takes to get publicity. Mr. Edwards’s aides said they chose this slow-news time of year, and the backdrop of New Orleans neighborhoods ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, in part to command the maximum amount of attention. Camera crews will be permitted to film Mr. Edwards as he helps with the cleanup efforts.

But there are less obvious advantages as well. Mr. Trippi said that when Mr. Dean declared for president in June 2004, they timed his announcement for a week before the deadline for the release of campaign finance reports. The idea was that the excitement built by the announcement in Vermont would result in a surge of contributions that would allow Mr. Dean to surprise the political world with a display of his grass-roots financial support. Mr. Dean’s big fund-raising report that month proved to be one of the biggest boosts of his campaign.
Mr. Edwards, who is arguably the most Web-savvy candidate in the ’08 race to date, is using Thursday’s event to try to gin up his supporters via the Internet. He sent out an e-mail message earlier this week, saying he was on the verge of making a decision that his aides say has, in fact, already been made.

The decision of how to time the announcements also reflects the particular needs of the candidates.


For Mr. Edwards, there is clearly interest in trying to win attention after two months in which Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama dominated the coverage of the Democratic contest.
For Mr. Romney, it is a chance to try to reset his bearings after a month in which he has struggled to reconcile his effort to be the most socially conservative candidate in the race with a more liberal record, as Massachusetts governor, on such issues as abortion and gay rights.
The motivation for the announcement of Gov. Tom Vilsack, the Democratic governor of Iowa, was in many ways more typical: a fairly unknown politician trying to get his name on the board with a thematic speech delivered in early primary states.

There may still be a few stop-the-presses surprises lurking out there. There is still a smidgen of doubt about the candidacy of Mr. Obama, who is spending this week in Hawaii with his family discussing his future, and even a smaller smidgen of doubt about Mrs. Clinton.

Although Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts has said he is likely to make a second effort at running, some Democrats say they would not be shocked to see him bow out. And it will be interesting to see if Al Gore succumbs to pleading by Democrats to run.

Mr. Edwards has been preparing for this moment since the second in 2004 when he knew he and Mr. Kerry had been defeated. His relatively high standing in some early polls in Iowa is testimony, in part, to how much time he has spent there in the last two years.

Mr. Romney’s intentions are also no mystery: he spent 212 days out of state last year, The Boston Globe reported last week, and has methodically moved over the past year to the right side of the Republican ocean.

And if Mrs. Clinton or Mr. McCain end up not running, that will come as sobering news to the stable of high-powered political talent they have recruited in recent months. Both even have putative campaign managers in place: Terry Nelson for Mr. McCain and Patti Solis Doyle for Mrs. Clinton.