Defining moments

It is fair to say that anyone who follows US politics has, by now, learned a lot about both Barack Obama and John McCain.

What might come as a surprise is just how narrow a slice of the American electorate that well-informed cohort really is.

It has been widely noted that the closely fought primary battle between Obama and Hillary Clinton drew unprecedented numbers of new voters into the process, raising turnout to record levels. It is important, however, to keep in mind just what 'record levels' mean where nominating contests are concerned.

The last US Presidential election to achieve a 60 per cent turnout among eligible voters took place in 1968. Since then turnout has fluctuated between a low of 49 per cent (1996) and a high of 56.7 per cent (2004).

In the party nominating contests turnout is always much, much lower. This year - despite the surge in voters - has been no exception.

According to a study compiled by George Mason University, the record-high turnout in Texas amounted to 28.3 per cent of eligible voters. In closely-fought Indiana the figure was 36.1 per cent.

Only two states (Ohio and California) cracked 40 per cent. This is not to belittle the process - in many cases those figures represent two or three times the number of people who normally vote in a given state's presidential primary. The point it to put it in perspective.

Even in this most transfixing of presidential years the contestants on American Idol still command the sustained attention of more people than do Obama, Clinton and McCain.

The candidates know this. That is why we are now entering a long shadow war in which Obama and McCain will seek to define both themselves, and each other, for the benefit of the mass of voters who are only slowly beginning to focus on November's choice.

Perhaps more important - and even more often overlooked - are those people who did vote in the primaries, but who follow politics only episodically.

I have more than a few friends who were transfixed by the presidential contest for a week or two as the political circus rolled through their state, and stopped focusing the moment it left. Most will tune in again (briefly) this fall, but until then they will pay little or no attention to politics.

It is for this reason that summer is devoted to defining people who an attentive viewer might assume were already well-formed in the public mind.

The soon-to-be nominees are already working to introduce themselves to the wider public in the most best possible light, while cementing an unfavourable caricature of the other guy in the broader public mind.

Fatal mistake

The clearest recent example of this was Michael Dukakis. After locking up the 1988 Democratic nomination he made the fatal mistake of taking a chunk of the summer off to relax and to tend to state business in Massachusetts, where he was then governor.

By the time he got around to introducing himself to the country, as opposed to just the Democratic faithful, the Republicans had already convinced much of the country that he was a wooly-headed soft-on-crime liberal who wanted to tax everything in sight. Fair? No, not really. But unquestionably effective.

Political operatives of all stripes learned a lesson from this: you may have been living in a political hothouse for the last year, but most of the country was not. Outside the hothouse, people still don't know you.

First impressions are lasting impressions, and if you do not move quickly that first impression will involve your opponent telling everyone what a jerk you are. Having heard little else about you people will be inclined to believe this. Once they do, changing their minds is going to be really, really hard.

The extent to which Obama and McCain have spent the last two weeks fixating on one another indicates that they both get this.

Both seem to understand that June polls don't mean much (if they did, we would be using this time to discuss Obama's plans to build on the triumphs of President Dukakis) - but early September polls do.

Thus, the thing to watch over the next six or eight weeks is not the ebb and flow of the daily numbers, but rather the public narrative that emerges surrounding McCain and Obama respectively.

By late September one candidate is likely to have a more generally positive public vibe surrounding him. If that candidate's folks have also succeeded in defining the other guy negatively then it will not be hard to figure out who is more likely to be moving into the White House come January.

Gordon Robison is a journalist and consultant based in Burlington, Vermont & Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades, including assignments in Baghdad for both CNN and Fox News.