Lost publicity high price for Democrats' unity

WASHINGTON -- With John F. Kerry having won 10 of the 12 states that have voted over the past three weeks, the Democratic nomination process may be ending just as it's starting.

All evidence suggests that would be bad news for the Democratic Party, whose poll standings have soared since its candidates began scrapping, and which finally claimed center stage after being a bit player in an all-Republican revue for three years.

But if the show closes early, allowing President Bush to retake his customary position at the top of every newscast with a carefully scripted event, the Democrats will have only themselves to blame.

Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe openly advocated for a "front-loaded" primary process, arguing that a brisk run-through of primaries would quickly yield a nominee who could then turn his guns on Bush. Presumably, this would also limit the ritual blood-shedding that has stained some Democratic contests in the past.

McAuliffe not only worked behind the scenes to encourage that elections be scheduled on top of each other, he has tried to shorten even that truncated process by shooing candidates out of the race. After the New Hampshire primary -- with just two small states having voted -- McAuliffe commented that candidates who failed to win a state in the following week's elections should pack it in.

Those words fueled the misperception that nothing much counts after a few early contests, like the baseball commissioner handing out pennants in April. McAuliffe also drained energy from the Democratic race by suggesting that the system had already served its function -- that those in the councils of power could now discern how it would all turn out.

Superficially, this helps Kerry, by making any challenge to his march to the nomination seem pointless. But in a larger sense, the combative primary contest has been the best thing that's happened to Kerry and his party. It's given the Democrats their mojo back, sharpening up the speeches of Kerry and other candidates while handing them a platform full of crowd-tested issues for November.

In the past, when Democrats controlled either the White House or one body of Congress, the party didn't have to strain to make its voice heard. That's when nominating contests tended to open up divisions rather than heal them. This year, the opposite has happened: The Democratic contenders are ending the nominating process sounding much more alike than when they started.

And the unified message -- whether communicated with stately disdain by Kerry, finger-pointing outrage by former Vermont governor Howard Dean, snare-drum brashness by retired General Wesley K. Clark, or trial-lawyer pleading by North Carolina Senator John Edwards -- has gotten through. Bush has taken to making follow-up calls on states visited by the Democratic campaign, like a child chasing after the parade, wondering when he'll get a chance to join in.

Back when the primary season took four months to unfold, the nominating process served another function: airing candidates' weaknesses and getting any unpleasant revelations out of the way before the general election. Bill Clinton dodged so many highly publicized controversies during the 1992 primary season that he enjoyed an amazingly smooth ride in the fall. Back in 1960, John F. Kennedy identified the West Virginia primary as a test of whether he could overcome the "religion issue" in a state where Protestants far outnumber Catholics. After he won there, the issue popped up only occasionally in his general-election campaign against Richard M. Nixon.

This year, with the front-loaded schedule, most of the vetting of candidates happened before any votes were cast, in a kind of virtual primary defined by poll numbers. Those polls zeroed in on the candidate who had garnered the most early support -- Dean. In the mysterious way that polls both measure and excite public opinion, Dean loomed as the presumptive nominee.

Throughout the summer and fall, every gun in American politics was aimed at Dean. His support for a reduction in the rate of growth of Medicare at a long-ago governor's conference dominated several debates; by contrast, Kerry's long-ago willingness to consider increasing the age of eligibility for Social Security got barely any attention. The attacks on Dean's record and demeanor spawned magazine covers questioning his fitness. And when the voting started, a frazzled Dean tripped with a thud.

Now, with the nomination increasingly in his cross hairs, Kerry awaits his own baptism of fire. It will be performed by Bishop Karl Rove.

Thanks in part to Kerry's own party chairman, there will be no purging of sins during the nominating process.