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home > by publication type > op-eds > The Economic Issue in the 2008 Campaign
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| Author: | Roger M. Kubarych, Henry Kaufman Adjunct Senior Fellow for International Economics and Finance |
|---|
April 8, 2008
Financial World
Many in the policy-interested community find the 2008 presidential campaign the most fascinating and unpredictable since the great Kennedy-Nixon battle of 1960. Like then, the Republicans found themselves with a flawed front-runner but no compelling alternative. So they coalesced around the familiar, although not entirely enthusiastically. (Even in 1960, popular President Eisenhower couldn’t hide the ambivalence behind his lukewarm support of Richard Nixon. One wonders whether George W. Bush is any more enamored with his one-time adversary John McCain.)
Also as in 1960, the Democrats are conflicted, intrigued by a youthful upstart who knows how to deliver an eloquent speech, but still enchanted by yet another Illinois native who to many deserves one last chance to restore the party’s greatness. What’s different is that back then the John Kennedy-Adlai Stevenson encounter only emerged as a finale at the national convention. This time, Illinois Senator Barack Obama and NY Senator Hillary Clinton (who left the Chicago suburbs with her husband for Arkansas, Washington DC, and suburban Chappaqua) have been battling almost from the outset. But the nomination is still up for grabs and may not be decided until the August convention itself.
Economic policy as we have come to know it didn’t play much of a role in the 1960 election. (The baby boomers were still in middle school. The millions who would eventually take Econ 101 and get introduced to economic concepts by Paul Samuelson’s textbook wouldn’t be voting for another decade or so.) Instead, personality, temperament, and TV make-up mattered more.
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Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. All Rights Reserved.
