We'll wear the public out, wear the committees out, wear the candidates out, and wear out the press. Mrs. Reagan's husband Ronald, of course, is one of ten announced or unannounced contenders for a Republican presidential nomination that will not be awarded until July 1980, and the nominee will still have to keep talking until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of next year. It is debatable whether presidential campaigns are actually getting longer. And Jim Farley spent two years before the 1932 convention rounding up delegates for Franklin Roosevelt. But if Mrs. Reagan doesn't quite have history on her side, she clearly is on the side of the public's perception.
Presidential campaigns seem longer.
They seem longer because the proliferation of state primaries have made them so much more visible. When delegates were recruited privately, as in Jim Farley's day, the campaign did not have to intrude into our lives. And campaigns seem longer because television more quickly sates our appetite for politics, while, at the same time, lowering our boredom threshold. We have grown used to stories being resolved in thirty minutes between commercials. The network evening news presents a two-year saga of who's ahead and who's behind.