Permanent campaign

Permanent campaign is a theory of political science conceived by Patrick Caddell, then a young pollster for U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who wrote a memo on December 10, 1976 entitled "Initial Working Paper on Political Strategy".

"Essentially," Caddell wrote, "it is my thesis governing with public approval requires a continuing political campaign." ^[1] Strategies of this nature have been in active development and use since Lyndon Johnson, where priority is given to short-term tactical gain over long-term vision. The frenzied, headline-grabbing atmosphere of presidential campaigns is carried over into the office itself, thus creating a permanent campaign that limits the ability of policies to deviate from the perceived will of the people (hence, intensive polling).

A famous example that illustrates just how strongly this mind-set has come to influence politics was during the Clinton Administration when pollster Dick Morris asked voters to help decide where Bill Clinton would go on vacation. In the words of columnist Joe Klein, "The pressure to 'win' the daily news cycle—to control the news—has overwhelmed the more reflective, statesmanlike aspects of the office."

Scott McClellan, former White House Press Secretary for U.S. President George W. Bush, wrote in his 2008 memoir What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception^[2] that the Bush White House suffered from a "permanent campaign" mentality, and that policy decisions were inextricably interwoven with politics.^[3]

See also

• Political campaign

References

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