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Candidates, Parties, and Campaigns: Electoral Politics in America

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Review of Candidates, Parties, and Campaigns: Electoral Politics in America This book analyzes what has happened in history of electoral politics, what has worked and what has not worked, and why it has worked or not worked. It also studies the ingredients of a successful campaign. The primary focus of the book is congressional campaigns. In the history of the electoral politics, in particular two campaigns are discussed. The California Gubernatorial race of Ronald Reagan and the political career of Franklin Roosevelt are compared and contrasted. The authors display the heavy influence that the Democratic party played in shooting Roosevelt to the top of the party. On the other hand, Reagan used less political power and more public relations. The book states, "Franklin Roosevelt was elected governor with the personnel and machinery of a great political party, after years of service in that party. Ronald Reagan was elected governor with personnel and techniques of contemporary public relations - and only the label of a party he had joined four years earlier." These two contrasting campaigns demonstrate the weakening of the political party's role in election and the increased value of information and technology. In analyzing what constitutes a campaign the book defines a three stage process. These three stages are cognition, affect, and evaluation. The campaign only influences how voters travel through each of these stages. The first stage, cognition, is the point at which voters recognize that an individual is a candidate for a particular office. The second stage, affect, voters develop positive or negative opinions about the candidate. In the last stage, evaluation, the voters decide if their votes will be cast for this candidate. The book states the component that makes a campaign successful or unsuccessful is dependent on its resources. The campaign's resources are the candidate, its organization, which includes it staff and volunteers, and finances, which the book declares as the most important to success. All of these components blend together to make a successful campaign. The authors illustrate the value of technology in the campaign process. Before television, door to door campaigning was used more often. Today, with television and a host of other electronic mediums it is possible to reach a greater poll of prospective voters. This new technology also presents new challenges to campaigns. For example, more money is required, because the cost of getting the message out is higher. The book states that use of television was slow to catch on for the use of congressional campaigns. Congressional candidates viewed using money for television as a waste of resources, because their message would hit many persons outside their district. Today, this is not true. Today, any successful campaign most employ the technological opportunities available. While reading this book, I thought of the unsuccessful campaign of Samuel Silverman for the 13th District's House seat. I came to the conclusion, that Silverman was running an antiquated campaign that depended too heavily on the party mechanism for success. I realized that he never made it passed the cognition stage of the process. It is my opinion that the votes he received were only votes for the Democratic party, and that no one actually knew he was running for office. The book also offers another idea about why Silverman was unsuccessful, lack of financial resources and lack of a visible campaign structure. The authors of this book presented their ideas clearly, providing exemplary illustrations of all of their points. The material was very easy to read and follow. Many times when writing about such a complex subject like congressional elections, with many different points to express, the author can become disjointed and confuse the reader. This was not the case with these authors. I think one of the most insightful chapters of the books is chapter nine. This section of the book provides case studies of campaigns which make the points expressed in the previous chapters easier to comprehend. The case studies were gathered using observation of the actual campaigns they were discussing and interviews with campaign members. To improve this book, I think the authors could provide more charts and graphs, demonstrating some of their ideas. For example, they could easily have placed a graph of the typical campaign organizational hierarchy into the book. Or, a chart showing the cost of newspaper, direct mail, and television advertising. Many of the ideas expressed could easily be transformed into easy to understand charts and graphs. Furthermore, I suggest the authors come out with a new edition of this book, updating their facts to include the elections 1994 and 1996. These two elections could solidify many points the authors make in this edition. For example, the elections of 1994 demonstrate the importance of financial resources as well as political party organization. In my opinion, the best part of this book are the illustrations the authors provide. Too many times authors get caught up in only explaining the ideas expressed in traditional vanilla style. This is not the case for these authors, they provided real world illustrations of the ideas they were expressing, which helped me understand the ideas they wanted to express. Even with these suggestions, I am not saying the current text is below average. In fact, I would say this text is above average. The authors clearly devoted hours of time to this project. I learned a substantial amount from learning this book. Before reading this text, I thought political parties played a crucial role in Congressional campaigns. After reading this, I understand that political parties are an important part of an campaign, but not the single most important factor that determines the success or failure of the campaign. Also, know I have an excellent understanding of the different stages and anatomy of the campaign. I also learned that a campaign takes on many different roles at the different stages of its life. For example, at the cognition stage the campaign has a goal of getting the candidate's name out to the voters. But, many of these stages work together. While getting the name out, the goal of getting the issues out coincide. I would recommend anyone wanting to learn more about the history, issues, makeup, or performance factors of a campaign to read this book.