Perhaps SJ's campaigns are just too long

In the SJ Council debate about election vs appointment for D3, some CMs worried that the campaign process might be rushed. Maybe that's an advantage, notes the NYT.

In today’s newsletter, let’s consider the benefits of this relatively short contest — and why we might not miss the bloated campaigns of recent decades.

Long campaigns can sap the public’s interest and energy, a dynamic that had clearly taken hold before Biden dropped out. A year of attacks and squabbling can breed cynicism and sow distrust of the political system in the electorate. And early primaries with more extreme voters “tug candidates to places that can hurt them later in the race,” the political consultant David Axelrod told me.

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Overexposed candidates can also make sloppy mistakes. Meanwhile, political reporters look for ways to spice up a boring campaign and sometimes latch onto ancillary issues. For instance, the scream that Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, let out after he lost the 2004 Iowa caucuses shadowed the final days of his campaign.

Politicians in other advanced democracies don’t spend nearly as much time on campaigns. Mexico, Japan and much of the European Union, for instance, have laws limiting them. French presidential races can’t officially start until two weeks before the first round of voting. The U.K. held a nationwide parliamentary election this summer in about six weeks. In Japan, campaigns last just 12 days. Citing declining public trust, the country’s governing party last week announced that it would lengthen that period for its next leadership election — to 15 days.

Read the whole thing (behind paywall) here.

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