The Unhappy Campaign

In the U.S., a presidential race is usually a kind of rite of passage. However profligate the political excesses, however tawdry the rhetoric, American campaigns have traditionally stirred the national blood with some sense of men and issues in collision, of a people engaged in a rich and complex process of choice. It can be an exciting business --even a lot of fun in its extravagant buncombe intermixed with tense concentration on the highest power stakes.

But 1972 has had little of all that. Columnist Marquis Childs was not exaggerating much when he described this presidential race as "one of the most unhappy campaigns in American history." The country's majority party was sundered. There was no real debate involved, for all the claims that it would be "the clearest choice in this century." The President scarcely campaigned at all, and the Democratic candidate, entangled in his early mistakes and misunderstandings, fell into a rhetoric of self-righteous moralism.

It was a long, curiously unsatisfactory political season, full of sour smoke, the fumes of scandal, and somehow little passion. There seemed at times an almost dangerous lack of interest. With or without surprises, Election Day was bound to be more exciting than the campaign. Whatever the outcome this week, most Americans would probably be relieved that it was over, that the country could get on with its pressing business in a seriousness that somehow has been absent for much of the political year.

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