Loading Poll...Playing The Expectations Game
Dr. Michael P. Riccards is Executive Director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy – New Jersey. Riccards is a former college president and a presidential scholar who has authored 15 books.
The silliness of American politics is nowhere more apparent than the expectations game that has emerged in the presidential primaries. Only in fantasy land can one take seriously a candidate who has finished fourth or fifth and make him into a major contender and participant in the weekly wearisome debates that the GOP has established.
There are two ways to exploit the expectations game. If you are a front-runner, you downplay your chances, not because you are modest but so people can stand in awe when the real results come in. Either you exceed the number you have set, in which case it is a monumental victory, or you do not do as well as you should, but look you already predicted it! That is the peril of being a front-runner.
Most people are not front-runners and will finish second, third, fourth or beyond. Then you will praise your remarkable third place showing. It was almost amusing to watch former ambassador Jon Huntsman vigorously praise his third place showing in New Hampshire. And then the FOX network gave prime time to Rick Santorum as he celebrated his incredible fourth or fifth. He and Newt were tied for that slot. And on and on he bloviated, as if he had won the very presidency itself.
The top runner Mitt Romney got 37% of the vote; Ron Paul 24%; Jan Huntsman 17%. Mitt Romney had won by only eight votes the week before in the Iowa caucus over Santorum. One wit said if Santorum had bused in nine gay people he would have won. But then he could not have run such a peculiar Christian values campaign which was anti gay and in general intolerant.
Gingrich has insisted that Romney cannot get the nomination since he would not be able to beat the incumbent president; but he Gingrich can win over Obama, “a Chicago machine politician” as he calls him. But if he can’t get at least a quarter of the Republican vote, how is he going to fare in the general election?
Romney insists that only he understands the private sector, and he deplores the economic mess we are in. We are in that mess because of private firms like his old company Bain which flipped companies like pancakes. And what Chicago politician will make mincemeat of his remark that he likes to fire people; that is exactly what the GOP needs-- a country club businessman who would make our economy more vulnerable. No wonder he can’t get a third of the vote of the GOP.
He has moved from being a front-runner to the heir apparent. After South Carolina, Gingrich, Perry, maybe Huntsman will drop out. Paul is running for ideological reasons; Santorum for some strange version of fundamentalist religious mission.
Now they have really raised the expectations game against Mr. Obama. But in the two man race there is no real game, except run hard and fast for the presidency. Then Americans will see a new strategy.
# # #