Running for president isn’t what it used to be. Just hours after Hillary Clinton announced that she was joining the race for the White House in 2016, she was on the road to Iowa to hold a series of low-key, intimate meetings with ordinary voters. In the past fifty or so years, presidential campaigns have become more costly, more choreographed, and more arduous than they used to be. How did that come about? In the old days, the process was less open. Republican and Democratic bigwigs picked their parties’ nominees in smoked-filled rooms at conventions. Most states did not hold primary elections, and those that did held non-binding “beauty contests”. In 1952 Dwight Eisenhower won the Republican primary in New Hampshire without even entering it. A “Draft Dwight” campaign put his name on the ballot. He won handily. Only then did he decide to run for the White House. On the Democratic side, Adlai Stevenson skipped the primaries entirely but was picked by grandees at the party convention. In the 1960s many Americans got fed up with having cigar-puffing insiders pick their candidates. In 1968 Senator Eugene McCarthy ran for the Democratic nomination on an anti-Vietnam war platform. He won 18 times as many votes as Hubert Humphrey, the vice president, but the party picked Humphrey anyway. The Democratic convention in Chicago that year was rocked by violent protests. And Humphrey eventually lost to Richard Nixon, the Republican. Afterwards, a commission chaired by George McGovern and Donald Fraser, a senator and a congressman, recommended reform. Democratic primaries were made binding, and the Republicans soon followed suit. Before long all states started holding primaries or caucuses, and candidates were forced to pitch directly to voters. This reform made election campaigns longer. It takes time to kiss all those babies, eat all those chicken dinners with apparent relish and answer endless questions in town hall meetings. It can be grueling. Barack Obama launched his first presidential campaign 633 days before polling day in 2008 ( with a speech six times longer than the one John F Kennedy made to announce his candidacy in 1960. ) The media start now speculating about the next election almost immediately after the previous one is over. The New York Times appointed a journalist to cover Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign in July 2013. Running for president now requires an iron constitution, an unshakeable self-belief, and the ability to say things that are not quite the whole truth. For a start, candidates must convince voters of two contradictory things. That they are so exceptionally talented that they should be commander in chief. And that they are regular folks just like you. The people who vote in primaries tend to be more politically extreme than the country as a whole. So, to win a contested primary, candidates must present themselves as passionate liberals or conservatives. Then they have to tack back to the centre to woo the moderates who decide general elections. It’s a delicate manoeuvre, which most candidates fail to pull off. Still, someone has to win. And the race is just beginning.

• published: 17 Apr 2015
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