Election season cuts far into work on policy

Robert Gladd, Las Vegas

Sunday, Aug. 2, 2009 | 2:03 a.m.

Regarding the health care reform fight, the endless election campaign season is a big part of the problem.

We elect a president for four-year terms, but the Washington political warfare culture reality is that he has but one year — the initial year — to accomplish anything substantive, because the legislatively distracting midterm election campaign season draws nigh thereupon, and on the heels of that comes the ever-lengthening acute phase ramp-up for the presidential reelection campaign.

Either the incumbent gets reelected, whereupon he is increasingly viewed as a “lame duck” who must quickly (i.e., in a year or less) “spend” what little “political capital” remains, or, a new president comes in. Back to square one. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Consequently, we have the problematic rush to get large-scale “reform” passed during year one — with the tactically expedient opposition pushback to delay it long enough to effectively kill it.

So, we really just get presidential policy leadership potential for only one year out of four. But we pay for all four.