The 2008 Formula

By William Kristol

Amid a lively presidential campaign, with vigorously contested nominations in both parties, interesting candidates and a new primary schedule, it's worth asking, What are some of the underlying dynamics of the 2008 election? What kind of election cycle, fundamentally, are we in?

Actually, we could be in two kinds at once. We're having a change election, and we're having a war election.

One of pollsters' favorite questions is this: Do you think the country is on the right track, or do you think it's going in the wrong direction? As you would expect, when the right-track number is pretty high or rising, incumbents do well (Ronald Reagan in 1984, Bill Clinton in 1996), or the incumbent's party does well (George H.W. Bush in 1988). When the wrong-track number goes up, the party in power gets ousted. The public wants change and gets it by defeating the incumbent--Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Right now, the wrong-track number is off the charts. Most polls have two-thirds or more of Americans saying the country is going in the wrong direction, with only about a quarter of the nation believing we're on the right track. Add Bush's 60%-plus disapproval rating, and Democrats think they're sitting pretty for 2008.

They may be. The Democrats won the national congressional vote by about 8 points over Republicans in 2006--and polls suggest they have increased their lead in the generic party competition since then. It's true, as Republicans hope, that two years in the congressional majority may burden Democrats with some perceived responsibility for the country's allegedly parlous state. But the presidency and the President will still tend to dominate the news and be held accountable--and the Bush Administration is proving particularly adept at providing ever fresh instances of scandal, pseudo scandal and incompetence to remind people they're in charge.

So 2008 should be a change election, and that should be good for the Democratic presidential nominee. That's less good, though, for Hillary Clinton's chances of being the Democratic nominee. She doesn't exactly embody change (her election would mean at least 24 years of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton). That's why she has been having trouble so far among Democrats. Change, after all, can be a factor in the primaries as well as in the general election. And who has been the surprise of the election cycle so far? Barack Obama. He wants to "turn the page," as he says in every speech. Obama is just about the perfect candidate for a change election.

But not for a war election. That's the other dynamic this year, and it can cut against or modify the change dynamic. The country is at war--literally in Iraq and Afghanistan, less visibly in the ongoing war on terrorism. We'll still be at war, more or less, in the fall of 2008. What do we know about war elections?

Americans have gone to the polls four times in the past century with troops fighting in the field. Twice, things seemed to be going well or reasonably well, and the incumbents were re-elected (F.D.R. in 1944, Bush in 2004). Twice, the wars were not going well, and the incumbent party lost (Korea in 1952, with Harry Truman choosing not to run and Dwight Eisenhower beating Adlai Stevenson; and Vietnam in 1968, with Lyndon Johnson withdrawing and Richard Nixon beating Hubert Humphrey).

Now, one could say, 1952 and 1968 show that war elections can also be change elections, if the wars aren't going well. So that's even better for the Democrats in 2008. Perhaps. But notice that in all four of the war elections, the more hawkish or more hawkish-seeming candidate won. In the three war elections since World War II, the Republican won (Ike, Nixon, Bush). And in the two war elections with no incumbent candidate (1952 and 1968), the winner, who came from the opposition party, had reassuring experience in dealing with wartime situations (Ike) or at least foreign policy challenges (former Vice President Nixon).

These precedents look better for John McCain or Rudy Giuliani than for Obama or Clinton. And McCain and Giuliani have an advantage that, say, Vice President Humphrey didn't have in 1968. They aren't much associated with the Bush Administration, and they might be able to turn their election campaign into a referendum on the future. Bush won't be on the ballot--though Democrats will try to wrap him around the neck of the G.O.P. nominee. But that nominee might be able to dodge that bullet, combining strong Commander in Chief credentials with enough of a message of change. There is current evidence that this won't be impossible: as of now, Giuliani and McCain run even with to slightly ahead of Clinton and Obama in the polls.

So which will dominate: War or change? My sense is that war trumps everything. And so, despite the Bush Administration's problems, if I had to bet, I would put my money (nervously) on a hawkish Republican over a dovish Democrat in 2008.