Last week Judy Keen, a veteran campaign correspondent for USA Today, wrote that the campaign for president is already in October mode. Keen is dead on. With about 80 days left until the Nov. 2 the crowds and planning around campaign events -- and the pressure on the candidates and their staff -- feel like the last days of any other presidential campaign.
This sense of acceleration is heightened by the extraordinary level of spending, the shrill tone of the advertising and the degree of political gamesmanship. Some days it seems this campaign has been going on forever. When have we ever had such a long, expensive and uniquely intense struggle for the White House?
Start with the money. More has already been spent in this presidential contest than in the entire 2000 cycle, which set the previous record. In fact, this is already the first billion-dollar presidential campaign.
As of June 30, the Bush-Cheney reelection machine had raised more than $228 million, and the campaign will be adding to this total substantially when its reports its July 31 numbers. Democratic challenger John Kerry is not far behind. His camp has said it raised $225 million through its convention week, easily the most ever raised by a presidential challenger (or any candidate other than the incumbent).
Of course, that's just the two nominees. Back in the primaries, Kerry's rivals for the Democratic nomination raised more than $200 million from donors and federal matching funds. And in addition to that, the Democratic and Republican national committees have raised nearly $350 million in this cycle, most of which will be spent on behalf of their respective White House nominees.
Don't forget the advocacy groups for either side -- such as MoveOn.org and the Club for Growth. According to Political Money Line, 37 of these new creatures on the political landscape have raised at least $1 million each. Together, they have raised more than $277 million to date, and much of that has been devoted to the presidential race.
Yet it's not only the money. The hyperactive heartbeat of this campaign has been audible since January -- a month when most past campaigns were just getting under way. By then it was clear that President Bush had no opposition for the Republican nomination. And it was also clear by month's end that Kerry's wins in Iowa and New Hampshire had him on his way to the Democratic nomination.
So the general election season won't be starting this fall -- it actually started last winter. You can even argue that the overall presidential campaign actually stretches back to 2000, the protracted and contested election that never really ended. But leaving that drama aside, this election year by itself has that Groundhog Day feeling: every day it's time to get up and campaign again, day-after-day, just the same.
Adding to this sensation of sameness was the Democratic convention, notable for its lack of drama. Because it was so controlled, it offered less conflict than the daily exchanges of attack-and-response that have been going on for months between the Bush and Kerry camps. The only question about the convention was how political strategists wanted their candidate to be seen by undecided voters -- estimated to be less than 20 percent of the electorate. That low figure is unprecedented at this stage of a presidential contest.
The Democrats focused their convention message on Kerry's military service in Vietnam and made it the basis for asking voters to trust him to handle homeland security and the war against terrorism. In any other election year that message might have had to wait a month to be rebutted by Republicans at their convention.
But this year the GOP had its campaign chairman, Ed Gillespie, and other prominent Republicans including Sen. Norm Coleman and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani encamped outside the convention. The Republicans immediately went on the cable channels spouting challenges to the Democrats' message.
Even President Bush did not wait until the Republican convention to fire back. He demanded that Kerry take a stand on Iraq: Was it right, in retrospect, to have voted to give the president authorization to go to war in Iraq, when no weapons of mass destruction have been found?
In every recent election a challenger running neck and neck with the president would likely have ignored that schoolyard dare. But Kerry, in keeping with the heat of this contest, decided to go toe-to-toe with the incumbent. He said he would still vote for the resolution. But he explained that did not mean he agreed with the president's decision to use that authorization to actually send troops into Iraq.
The four-term senator said he wanted the president to have the resolution as leverage against Saddam Hussein. Kerry explained that the president could have used the threat of military action to build a large international coalition while forcing Saddam to cooperate with weapons inspectors.
President Bush then fired back -- and remember we are still in early August -- that his opponent was confused but finally had made it clear that the president had been right all along. Democrats countered that the president had distorted Kerry's response. And then Cheney jumped in to say that Kerry's "hesitations and uncertainties" are evidence of a man who is unfit to be trusted with command of the military during a war with terrorists.
And that is not the end of it. Seeing polls indicating that Kerry is gaining support as a capable leader for the war on terror, the Bush campaign has rushed three ads onto the air since the Democratic convention. All the ads play heavily on the grief and the burdens the nation has felt since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. "My most solemn duty is to lead our nation -- to protect our citizens… we must do everything in our power to bring our enemies to justice before they hurt us again."
Oh, and don't forget the ads funded by the president's supporters attacking Kerry's military record and questioning the medals he won during Vietnam.
The intensity of this battle has the feel of final days. Tight and sometimes contradictory polls have added to the fire. It is not only that the race is close but that Kerry has managed to hold a lead in most polls over the last two months. It is a slight lead -- often within the margin of error -- but the trend has prompted several political prognosticators to say Kerry has the election in hand if he does not make a major error.
History indicates that any challenger who can stay this close or lead the incumbent for so long always wins. Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, recently wrote that the president will have to pull a Harry Truman-like comeback to win in the fall.
Before that idea could take hold, however, the Gallup poll announced that President Bush's approval rating had climbed back above 50 percent. It had been as low as 46 percent in May. While most Americans still disapprove of his handling of the war in Iraq, President Bush now has a historical marker on his side because no incumbent with an approval rating above 50 percent has ever lost his re-election bid.
In this strange political dynamic the insiders are trying to figure out what might be decisive. Next up is the Republican convention and predictions of major demonstrations. But will the GOP message -- likely tied to commemorations of the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks -- make an impression on undecided voters? It's possible that demonstrators against the president might make their own impression, for better or worse. And then it will be on to the debates. The campaigns are still fighting over whether there will be two or three presidential face-offs.
And of course there is always the possibility of an October surprise. But since it already feels like October, will even a surprise really change many votes? No, in this bizarre election year, it will have to be bigger than a surprise. It will take nothing less than shock and awe to reshape a race that remains too close to call.
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