Marco and Hillary jump in. Do presidential campaign announcements matter anymore?

 The metaphorical starting gun has fired, and 2016 candidates are jostling for position. But let’s get real: Rubio, Clinton, et al have been running for president for some time.

|
Hillary For America/AP
In this image taken from video posted to hillaryclinton.com on Sunday, Hillary Rodham Clinton announces her campaign for president. The former secretary of state, senator, and first lady enters the race in a strong position.

Do presidential campaign announcements matter?

That question comes up because the metaphorical starting gun has been fired, and 2016 candidates are jostling for position as they announce they’re off and running. Ted Cruz was first on March 23, followed by Rand Paul on April 7. Hillary Rodham Clinton declared her candidacy on Sunday in a video that featured lots of voters. Marco Rubio followed on Monday with a Miami speech.

But let’s get real: All of these people have been running for president for some time. They’ve been courting donors, wooing party officials, and vetting staff. They’ve spent days and days strategizing with consultants and approving position papers. They’re not beginning new campaigns. They’re continuing existing ones.

Given that, why pretend they’re starting a political journey they actually began at some point in 2014? Many voters – if not most – know otherwise. Thus announcements risk feeding a general sense that official stuff doesn’t reflect what’s really happening in campaigns.

“The gap between formal statements and informal realities perhaps strains credibility with citizens,” writes Marquette assistant professor Julia Azari today in an interesting post on the substance of announcements at the Mischiefs of Faction political science blog.

That’s likely true. And in the long run, no candidate won a nomination due to the effort put into their official announcement. Just ask President (not!) Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor whose 2012 campaign rollout was an elaborate affair that involved a stroll across a New Jersey field with the Statue of Liberty in the background, and lots of flags.

It was a flop. His campaign deteriorated from there.

Still, official campaign announcements are a ritual, and like all rituals, they have strange powers derived from history and usage.

For one thing, they’re a way for candidates to announce their general themes, in media circumstances over which they have almost complete control. Whether those themes are useful or not, or fit the candidate, will be told in coming months. That’s what will help swing the campaign. But consider Texas Senator Cruz: He announced with a speech at conservative Liberty University in Virginia, not in his home state. As Matt Bai of Yahoo News points out, that means Cruz intends to run on ideological conservative values.

“That’s probably the path that best suits both his temperament and the political reality,” writes Mr. Bai.

Mrs. Clinton did not even appear in her announcement video until near its end. The voters quickly profiled in the bulk of the film announce that the former secretary of State intends to try and portray herself as the champion of the average person. Will that work for her? We’ll sure get a chance to see.

Presidential campaign announcements also have practical effects. They’re like pushing a button, in terms of campaign finance law. Official candidates have to abide by donor limits for contributions to their campaign accounts. They’re not supposed to coordinate any longer with super PACs that support them. And so on.

They force candidates and their supporters to focus. With the game truly on, media scrutiny of every move will only increase. That makes the consequences of a subsequent misstep greater.

But their most useful attribute, for candidates, may be a simple one: attention. For one day at least, all eyes of the political world are on them. It’s like a birthday, or a wedding, or an anniversary celebration. You’re the star.

And the next day normal life reemerges.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Marco and Hillary jump in. Do presidential campaign announcements matter anymore?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2015/0413/Marco-and-Hillary-jump-in.-Do-presidential-campaign-announcements-matter-anymore
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe