Table Of ContentWhat Are Campaigns For?
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What Are Campaigns For?
The Role of Persuasion in Electoral
Law and Politics
j ames a. gardner
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gardner, James A., 1959-
What are campaigns for? : the role of persuasion in electoral law and
politics / James A. Gardner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-539261-6 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Political campaigns—United States. 2. Election law—United States. I. Title.
JK2281.G37 2009
324.70973—dc22
2009001738
________________________________________________________________
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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For Lise
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Contents
Preface ix
I ntroduction 1
1 Th e Political Campaign: Emergence of
the Deliberative Ideal 13
2 E lection Law and the Formation of Public Opinion 45
3 Campaigns and the Stability of Political Opinion 83
4 Democratic Th eory and the Th in
Election Campaign 115
5 Th e Tabulative Campaign 147
C onclusion 191
Bibliography 195
Index 213
vii
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Preface
this book represents the culmination of a long personal journey during
which my beliefs about the purposes and desirable characteristics of election
campaigns changed dramatically. Like most Americans, I have found electoral
politics a constant source of disappointment. Candidates, it has long seemed
to me, have been reluctant to speak their minds, to address challenging
p roblems boldly, and to risk their political fortunes on a clear vision capable of
inspiring a public hungry for thoughtful and intelligent leadership. As a result,
our electoral politics has frequently struck me as inadequate, undignified,
and beneath not only our aspirations but also our capacity as a democratic
people seeking to shape our own collective destiny in the world.
As a lawyer and legal academic, my point of entry into the fi eld of election
campaigns has been the law and, more specifi cally, the constitutional doc-
trines that structure our democratic institutions. Upon examining these
legal regimes with some care, I came at fi rst to the conclusion that they
thwart our ability to produce the kind of campaigns to which we evidently
aspire. I consequently began this project with the intention of analyzing and
critiquing our legal institutions and then suggesting legal reforms that might
be capable, if not of curing the relevant problems, at least of creating condi-
tions in which our electoral politics could better fl ourish and more closely
approach our ideals. As I looked more deeply into the subject, however,
I began to doubt my premises. Our beliefs about campaigns are comparatively
recent, and from a historical point of view highly contingent. A half-century
of social science research continues to affi rm the existence of severe and
crippling obstacles to the achievement of the kind of campaigns for which
most of us wish. Even the most sophisticated theoretical work now being
done on democracy relegates campaigns to a much less exalted place in the
democratic arena than conventional wisdom would suggest.
A s a result, I eventually came around to the view I now hold and have laid
out in this book. Campaigns may be ugly and undignifi ed, and they are with-
out question important events in the life of a democratic polity, but—to my
ix
