Elusive "Electability"
There's a lot of terms that the media use to describe presidential candidates, but by far the most elusive – if not downright contrived – term is "electability."
What makes somebody electable? If they're up in the polls today? If they're taller than the opponent? If they're enjoying political momentum? If so, why not just say that?
According to Jason Zengerle's recent piece in New York Magazine, America's political scientists have cracked the code!
Candidate electability = a + b1 (party) + b2 (evaluation of C) + b3 (C's proximity to R) + b4 (C's proximity to the average voter) + b5 (C's proximity to party) + b6 (C's nomination chances) + b7 (C's TV performance) + e
Huh? Excuse me? I have more faith in the "lead pipe locks" I hear about on sports talk radio.
Zengerle's piece continues on, discussing how, if you believe some Democratic pollsters, "electability has surpassed Iraq as the issue most important to Iowans." That's all fine and good, if only we could pin down the trait. Unfortunately, while we can figure out a candidate's stance on gun control, national security, abortion, illegal immigration, the economy, it's nigh impossible to quantify or factually state his or her 'electability?'
According to quotes in the piece and a subsequent interview he did with National Public Radio, Zengerle has boiled 'electability' in 2008 down to some combination of the following traits:
Great. Thanks for the help, guys. All these words, all this discussion, all this research -- and basically 'electability' boils down to 'this candidate is so money!'
It's enough to drive a political observer (or oddsmaker) up the wall, writes Zengerle:
Unlike political judgments that are based on concrete assessments of, say, a candidate's record or even something as grubby as his fund-raising prowess, those that are based on a candidate's supposed electability can change on a moment's notice. And then change again. Electability is completely ephemeral. Even those hoary and maddeningly indefinable political qualities like "character" and "authenticity" have more meat on their bones.So, dear readers, in light of Mitt Romney's speech yesterday, or Huckabee's Cinderella story and Giuliani presumably proving his electability on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, we regular voters are forced to listen even more closely and critically to the media reports of a candidate or the characterizations of the race.
As Zengerle told NPR:
It's an unanswerable question, at least for the next year, and, you know, if you have 24 hours of programming to fill, you can keep on going around and around and around on that same topic…The next time you hear or read a political handler espousing a candidate's electability, remember that it's the vaguest, softest, most arbitrary, in-the-eye-of-the-beholder-est terms in the political dictionary.It's completely dependent on context and time, and it can change from one moment to the next.
And that the most electable person is the person we all end up voting for ... based on many factors, among them their je ne sais quoi.