The Permanent Campaign

A detailed Summary of The Permanent Campaign

"The Permanent Campaign" was written by Norman J. Ornstein and Amy S. Mitchell. This article appeared first in The World & I, in January 1997.

Norman Ornstein is regarded as one of our nation's foremost experts on Congress. Mr. Ornstein received a Ph.D.. from the University of Michigan, he writes for the NewYork Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and he has a regular column in Roll Call newspaper called "Congress Inside Out". Mr. Ornstein is also an election analyst for CBS and appears frequently on television shows including the Today Show, Nightline and the Mac Neil/Lehre News Hour where he has been a consultant and contributor for

Mr. Ornstein is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and is also an advisor and member of the Free TV for Straight Talk coalition. The coalition is a group of 80 leaders from the worlds of politics, corporations, broadcast journalism, the entertainment industry and public interest groups. They support giving political candidates free air time on TV to promote their political views without the media's input. He has authored or co-authored recent books such as How We Can Get Out of It, Debt and Taxes: How America Got Into Its Budget

3.http://www.journalism.org/PeoplePej.html

and the Republicans now rely heavily on frequent polls done to assess public opinion in hopes to gain voters. Some people totally discredit even the most scientific polls but there is no question that these polls are here to stay.

After the advent of the television the political system changed once again. The people could now here and see the candidates every day, even live. This took great skill by the candidates and their staff to figure out ways to use the media to their advantage.

By the 1880's the trend was to bring the issues and candidates to the people. Soon candidates began to travel by train and do "whistle-stop tours" where they would go from town to town and make speeches. In 1892 Grover Cleveland gave his nomination speech in Madison Square Garden in front of a huge crowd. Traditionally these speeches were given only to the party leaders. This effort to bring the candidates closer to the voters had dramatic effects on the way elections were being conducted, many states started having primary elections to judge the parties' candidates popularity.

I believe that if we scrutinized our media as much as we do our candidates our country would be much better off. We have become a country of instant gratification and short attention spans. When we want information we want it now and we want it fast. People need to start considering the sources of the information that streams so easily throughout the country in our media. The line between fact and political opinion is becoming harder and harder to distinguish every time you read a newspaper.

than likely doomed politically. Hopefully in the future our society will start to look at what a candidate could do, or has been doing, in office instead of what they have done in their bedroom.

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Approximate Word count = 1769
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English