On The Increasingly Looooong Length Of Presidential Campaigns

Mark Daniels gives us a fascinatingly solid and terse summary of the evolution of Presidential campaigns and how they have now morphed into multi-year campaigns. A key quote:

The point: Anyone who wants to win the nomination of her or his party needs to build up a head of steam to win early. That means more than having an organizational infrastructure or piling up a campaign war chest, what’s often called wholesale politics. It also puts a premium on retail politics, overt, public, go-for-it campaigning for office. In the current atmosphere, if a presidential candidate hasn’t got an organization fairly well put together two years before the next Inauguration Day–which today is, by the way–they can kiss their prospects good-bye.

Those are the realities. But I don’t like them. It seems to me that somewhere along the line, the people we elected to be Governors and Senators, Representatives and Mayors ought to do what we elected them to do: govern.

Read the entire post. He shows that this is not something that happened overnight but is part of a process. And this year a full-fledged, full-court-press Presidential campaign seems to be starting earlier than ever. But why not? It fits in with the pattern that Daniels outlines for us.

A HORRIBLE THOUGHT: At this rate, the 2012 Presidential campaign will start in January 2008. Does Jeb Bush have everything in place yet?