PERRspectives: John Edwards Impersonates Gary Hart in NH

January 5, 2008

John Edwards Impersonates Gary Hart in NH

In New Hampshire Friday, John Edwards was offering his best Gary Hart impersonation. Like Hart in 1984, Edwards claimed his second place showing behind Barack Obama in Iowa had transformed the Democratic nomination into a two-man race. But no one is buying it, probably including Edwards himself. Sadly, Edward has misread the history and lessons of Iowa.

You can't blame him for trying. Edwards simply had to win the Iowa caucus to transform the predictable media narrative of the Clinton-Obama race. The landscape in New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond required it. His back against the wall after Iowa, Edwards portrayed his one-point margin over Hillary Clinton as a death-blow to her campaign:

"They [voters] want to see a candidate of change, and so they now have two choices in making that decision, and this choice is somebody who will fight for the change that makes America what it's capable of being."

Pundits are unconvinced. As political analyst Dean Spiliotes put it, "I still think it's Hillary against Obama, and that puts (Edwards) in a tough spot to the extent that he's also talking about change." Hillary Clinton is down, but not out. And coming of Iowa, John Edwards did not capture the position of the clear grassroots insurgent alternative to the establishment frontrunner. If anyone benefited from the Iowa Effect, it is Barack Obama and not John Edwards:

The Iowa Effect, in a nutshell, is the complete upending of the predicted presidential primary landscape by a candidate's unexpected performance in the nation's first caucus. Riding a wave of adoring press coverage by a media eager to hype the tale of the underdog, the perceived winner in Iowa sweeps through New Hampshire and subsequent primary states to take (or at least seriously challenge for) the party's nomination.

Just ask Gary Hart. In December 1983, I joined Hart's Democratic presidential campaign in New Hampshire. At that time, the Colorado Senator polled at 2% nationally and a somewhat more respectable 5% in New Hampshire, well behind the media's chosen front-runners Walter Mondale and John Glenn. Thanks to an experienced team and ground-breaking grassroots mobilization, by mid-February Hart moved into a distant second place behind Mondale. The day before the Iowa caucus and eight days before the New Hampshire primary, Hart trailed Mondale by roughly 35% to 15%.

Which is when Iowa changed everything. Sure enough, Mondale ran away with the 1984 Iowa caucus, 49% to 16%. But it was Gary Hart who finished a shocking second. (John Glenn's campaign imploded after his dismal fifth place showing.) That same night, Hart declared the nomination a two-man race and confided to an aide that his second-place showing meant he would be the next president of the United States.

Hart's boundless optimism was based on the media transformation and the tectonic momentum shift he knew would result for his stunning Iowa performance (in part due to his own experience with George McGovern's campaign in 1972). As the New York Times recounted in 1988:

In 1984, Walter F. Mondale ran ahead of the other Democratic contenders, but television belonged to Gary Hart. When NBC News reported on Iowa that night, Tom Brokaw congratulated Mr. Hart for his performance; John Chancellor said Mr. Hart was a ''surprise.'' On ABC, Sander Vanocur took a giant step: Mr. Hart, he said, had turned the nominating process into ''a two-man race.''
Well, in real life Mr. Hart had not done that. In real life, he had won the support of only 15 percent of the participants in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, while finishing a bare 1,400 votes in front of the still enduring Mr. McGovern. On the other hand, who needs raw votes and crusty state chairmen when we can have a horse race? Television correspondents anointed Mr. Hart to be Mr. Mondale's principal challenger, and that's what he became. Money and enthusiasm flowed into his campaign. A new reality was born. One week after the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Hart won the primary in New Hampshire.

On CBS that night, Dan Rather called the Democratic Presidential race a ''whole new ballgame.'' Mr. Brokaw said there was ''now the possibility'' that Mr. Hart might win the nomination. Talk about horse races; in 1984, we got the Preakness. Television erected a starting gate in Iowa, and out came Mr. Hart. Coincidentally, Sherry Jones, a documentary maker, filmed Mr. Hart in New Hampshire in the months before the Iowa caucuses. He was in debt; he had a second mortgage on his house; he was scarcely a blip, as they say, in the polls. At the same time, he knew a great truth. Ms. Jones - whose documentary, ''So You Want to be President,'' was eventually shown on the PBS series ''Frontline'' - filmed Mr. Hart in a living room, when he rallied dispirited backers.

''You can get awfully famous in this country in seven days,'' he told them. ''I mean it's phenomenal. It doesn't take much. And name recognition - your polls go up.''

Gary Hart was prescient, indeed. The next day in New Hampshire, our usual press van of four reporters was replaced by two busloads of media from around the world. A week later, Gary Hart manufactured a 30% turn-around and won the New Hampshire primary by 10 points. The Iowa Effect was complete.

(Ultimately, of course, Hart lost a hard-fought nomination battle to Mondale. After sweeping out New Hampshire to wins in Maine, Massachusetts, Florida and other "Super Tuesday" states, Hart stumbled badly in Illinois, New York and New Jersey. A late charge in Ohio and the June California primary was not enough to block a first-ballot win for Mondale at the Democratic convention in San Francisco.)

Alas, John Edwards is not Gary Hart and this is not 1984. The two aren't merely very different candidates with very different messages for the American people. Iowa was a make-or-break state which John Edwards had to win to undo the media conventional wisdom.

Desperate men say desperate things. Mitt Romney's thorough Iowa defeat in Iowa by Mike Huckabee put his campaign on the edge of the abyss. While John Edwards' claim he's in a two-man race with Barack Obama may be wishful thinking, Mitt Romney entered the realm of the comic. Reinventing himself yet again, Romney hilariously declared that as the venture capitalist, ex-governor millionaire son of an automobile magnate, he is the agent of change.

Next Tuesday in New Hamsphire, John Edwards would like to party like it's 1984. But to the degree the analogies apply at all, Hillary Clinton looks like Walter Mondale. And Barack Obama, not John Edwards, is playing the role of Gary Hart.

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