The Washington Post’s The Fix blog today uses Michele Bachmann’s multiple presidential announcements to discuss why politicians need to announce they’re running, over and over.
Welcome to the world of the modern presidential campaign announcement where candidates and their campaigns do everything they can to get multiple bites at the media coverage apple by, in essence, saying the exact same thing again and again.
And it’s not just Bachmann. Huntsman, Pawlenty, Gingrich, Romney — they’ve all been there.
The theory: The first day of a campaign is full of hope and optimism. People write good things about the candidate and his/her vision. Sort of like opening day for the Twins. Usually, it doesn’t get any better.
Says Chris Cillizza in the blog:
So, why not — if the news media allows it — have three or more opening days?
The entire game in these early days of a presidential primary fight is to get your name and story out to as many people — particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire — as possible. Basic math tells you that announcing twice or even three times broadens the universe of people who hear about it.
What the candidates and their campaigns are doing then is simply taking advantage of the unable-to-be-sated political media world in which saying the same thing two weeks apart amounts to news.
(For the record, the Fix is on the forefront of guilty parties here as we have written about every announcement mentioned above — often in great detail.) [MinnPost often does it, too, I’m afraid.]
When will the ever-growing number of “official” announcements end? Probably when the media stops covering them as news events. In other words: no time soon.
