Opening the Silly Season

By WALTER ISAACSON

Yes, Virginia, there is a presidential election in 1984--and it has begun

A former Vice President goes ice fishing and poses with a puny perch dangling from his line. A 68-year-old Senator dons athletic shorts and runs a 60-yd. dash in a San Francisco track meet. A man who once orbited the earth turns up at a cattle show and enters a contest to guess the weight of a black Simmental bull; first prize is a dozen vials of bull semen.

Such hijinks can mean only one thing: the quadrennial silly season has started again. Twenty-one months before the presidential election and a full year before the first caucus or primary, a drove of Democratic hopefuls are formally declaring their candidacies. A few, heaven help the electorate, have been campaigning unofficially for more than a year.

Walter Mondale, 55, the popular party warhorse who currently leads the pack, will make his announcement this week. Colorado Senator Gary Hart, 45, armed with a pile of position papers and an organizational expertise learned when he managed George McGovern's campaign twelve years ago, kicked off his quest last week. Senator Alan Cranston, 68, of California, seizing on the issue of a nuclear arms freeze, made his long-shot race official three weeks ago. Of the top four contenders, only Senator John Glenn, 61, has not formally announced his candidacy. He will not do so until mid-April. He did, however, fly to Iowa and New Hampshire last week, and held a major fund raiser in his home state of Ohio.

All this politicking seems wearyingly premature, like Christmas decorations in July. It is no consolation that both Jimmy Carter and George McGovern officially began their long-shot bids even earlier. Candidates used to attract little press attention at this point in the campaign and thus could test themes and sharpen positions with slight risk of committing a fatal gaffe. This time around, however, they are already in the hot glare of television cameras. That kind of exposure encourages rhetorical posturing and, over the long haul, may discourage voter interest.

Ironically, the race for the Democratic nomination has moved into high gear so quickly partly because of an effort to shorten the political season. Last year the party decided to give the states only four months, instead of five, to choose delegates to the Democratic Convention, and as a result many primaries and caucuses were moved up. In the past two elections, candidates had a month after the Iowa caucuses to regroup for the New Hampshire primary. But in 1984 New Hampshire follows Iowa by a week, and a week after that at least a dozen more states--the number could grow--will hold their caucuses or primaries. All told, upwards of 30% of the Democratic Convention's delegates will be selected in the first three weeks of the process. "The third week of the primaries could be the bottom of the ninth inning," says the Democrats' past chairman Robert Strauss.

As a result of this earlier clustering, candidates can no longer concentrate on one or two early states in hopes of gaining the momentum to win in the larger primaries. By the end of this year, a serious candidate will have been forced to campaign, organize, and raise money for television time in states across the country.

The need for money makes it even more important that candidates qualify as soon as possible for federal funds. Mondale, Cranston and Hart have already raised the requisite $5,000 in small donations from each of 20 states; donations to them will now be matched by the Government, payable next January. In addition, the decision by the AFL-CIO to consider endorsing a candidate this December means that there will be an important miniconvention before the primaries even begin.

Front Runner Mondale stands to benefit most from the new rules, which make it more difficult for a dark horse to score an early upset. His campaign is better organized than any of the others, and his coffers are brimming. Mondale is the only candidate given a chance of winning a two-thirds majority at the AFL-CIO meeting, which is required to get the group's endorsement. His stumping for Democratic candidates last year has ingratiated him with party officials, who get 22% of the seats at the convention.

Mondale's campaign theme will combine his traditional Democratic liberalism with pragmatic ideas that he developed during a "rethinking process" over the past two years. He advocates a partnership between business and Government to help revitalize American industry, and speaks of the needier tougher trade policies. "I'd press our nation to compete again," he says. So far Mondale has concentrated on each of the Democrats' traditional constituencies: organized labor, blacks, Jews, blue-collar workers, women and teachers. He appealed to many of them last week in thoroughly Democratic Chicago. "This Administration's position on women is as wrong as it can possibly be," he told a luncheon of professional women. To a group of senior citizens in a Jewish neighborhood, he praised Israel for its handling of the inquiry into the massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon ("I say God bless Israel for her example") and criticized Reagan's approach to Social Security reform as "unfair." He has been courting labor by strongly supporting an ill-advised "domestic content" bill that would require foreign auto exporters to use American parts and labor.

Mondale has genuine wit, but he is not without his liabilities. He is closely associated with the unpopular presidency of Jimmy Carter. His brand of liberalism is in eclipse, so much of the intellectual force of his campaign will have to come from his "new ideas." Most important, the scrutiny given the front runner will magnify and occasionally distort his campaign. Mondale is the man to beat: any victories will be viewed as unremarkable, any losses considered big upsets, and any stumbles treated as potentially fatal.

Glenn, who is running second to Mondale in the opinion polls (41% to 17%, according to a Harris survey of Democratic voters this month), has an all-American aura that seems almost undiminished since that day 21 years ago when his Friendship 7 capsule re-entered the atmosphere. He has been neither appealing directly to individual voter blocs nor organizing grass-roots volunteers. His aides feel that his celebrity makes it possible for him to win the primary obstacle run by appealing to a broad cross section of voters. "The interesting question is whether it's possible to have a charismatic moderate," says his press secretary, Greg Schneiders, a former Carter aide. Interesting indeed, since charisma is seldom listed among Glenn's considerable qualities as a candidate. Glenn's campaign could be affected by the release this October of the film version of Tom Wolfe's book on the space program, The Right Stuff. The portrayal of Glenn (by actor Ed Harris) might either deflate or enhance his image as an embodiment of traditional American values.

Glenn has developed a reputation in the Senate as a careful student of technological issues. His conclusion that the SALT II treaty was not adequately verifiable in 1979 helped prevent its ratification by the Senate; he now says he supports the arms treaty, which has been shelved. He has yet to develop cutting campaign themes, mainly stressing the need for more investment in education and research.

Last week Glenn flew his own Beechcraft plane to Iowa, where he held a press conference at the state capitol in Des Moines, tried to weigh a bull by eye (he guessed 1,905 lbs., off by about 25 lbs.) and presented an award to Iowa's seedstock producer-of-the-year. "This is the first cattle show I've been to in months where Fritz Mondale and I have not been the main attractions," he joked. More seriously, he made the pledge against embargoes that Iowa voters love: "It's high time we stopped using food as a foreign policy weapon."

Hart made his announcement on the steps of his own state capitol in Denver. Just as Mondale must transcend his reputation as a Big Government liberal, Hart has been working during his eight years in the Senate to shed some of the ideological baggage associated with the ill-fated McGovern campaign. He is included in the somewhat nebulous group known as "neo-liberals," who stress the need for a pragmatic approach by business, labor and Government to adapt the economy to an era of high technology. The theme of the election, he said on a campaign swing through Mississippi after his announcement, is "Who represents the future the best?" Hart has put together reams of position papers (and a book to be published next month) dealing with his ideas on making the military stronger but less bloated, reforming the tax code with a "consumption tax," and guiding new business investments using tax incentives. His challenge will be to package what currently seems like a Chinese menu of interesting but often conflicting ideas into coherent campaign themes.

Rather than aiming at traditional voting blocs (he is the only major candidate to defy organized labor on protectionist legislation), Hart hopes to build a young grass roots army that will knock on enough doors in Iowa and New Hampshire to catapult him past Glenn as the prime challenger to Mondale. He can also count on a base of support in the booming Rocky Mountain West.

Cranston intends to build a power base around voters who are primarily concerned with nuclear arms control. "We cannot revive our economy, or save our society, until we end the incredibly dangerous, shamefully expensive arms race," he said at his announcement three weeks ago. Unlike Glenn and Hart, both of whom are respected for their diligence but not for their legislative skills, Cranston is an adroit Senate leader. He demonstrates his good health with public displays of his sprinting prowess. But his age, despite Reagan's robust example, and his lack of broad support make his candidacy a long shot.

Cranston is not the only Senator to have succumbed to the "Why not me?" syndrome, a condition that infects members of the Senate when the presidential nomination is thought to be up for grabs. Ernest ("Fritz") Hollings, 61, of South Carolina, a grand Southern orator who some say would be a perfect running mate with Mondale on a Fritz & Fritz ticket, is floating trial balloons. Also considering declaring their candidacies are Dale Bumpers, 57, a highly respected Senator from Arkansas, and Reubin Askew, 54, a former Governor of Florida.

With such a large field, there is a slightly higher than average chance that the nomination will not be decided until the convention. Some state delegations may try to remain uncommitted or pledged to favorite sons. The 850 or so party officials automatically selected may also represent a large uncommitted bloc. In addition, the party rules have been changed so that delegates are not legally bound to the candidates for whom they were elected. But most experts feel that the contest will quickly boil down to a race between Mondale and either Glenn or Hart, with one emerging as the winner before the primaries are over.

The ever lengthening campaign process has, in theory, some virtues: it could test whether a candidate can inspire confidence, organize his time and staff, think on his feet, delegate authority and express new ideas. But much of that is now lost in the hoopla that surrounds the earliest stages of a campaign. Unfortunately, every remark a candidate makes for the next year will be considered more for its potential controversy -- or at least its access to a share of the nightly news programs--than for its content. The challenge for voters will be to use the arduous process to determine how well a candidate might govern, not just how well he campaigns.

-- By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Christopher Ogden/Chicago and Evan Thomas/Washington

With reporting by Christopher Ogden/Chicago, Evan Thomas/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.