John Sears, once the manager of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, coined the phrase, “Politics is motion.” It is the best explanation of how former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean faltered going into the Iowa caucuses while Sens. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and John Edwards, D-N.C., surged.

It also explains why Dean is out of the presidential contest and why, more important, the ultimate winner of the Democratic nomination is still open to question.

For the last year, Dean surged with his incredible Internet fundraising, pithy ad campaigns and an edginess that left his opponents in his dust. But in the weeks leading up to Iowa’s quadrennial event, Dean’s misstatements about Saddam Hussein, his endorsements from former Vice President Al Gore and actor Martin Sheen and his tendency to yell at Iowans were tantamount to putting his parking brake on while his car was still in drive.

Any mechanic will tell you this can be disastrous for a vehicle.

Right now, Kerry and Edwards are both in motion, with Edwards moving faster. The three basic elements of any campaign are: time, money and people, with the latter two always the function of the former. So, just before Super Tuesday, let’s look at whether Edwards has enough of the three elements available to him.

It is no mistake that many of the pundits inhabiting “Cableland” missed what was happening in Iowa because most of them have never run or worked a political campaign. Woody Allen once famously paraphrased the educator John Dewey’s quote, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach” by adding, “Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” One might add, “Those who can’t teach gym second guess campaigns.”

Democrat James Carville and Republican Bill Kristol spotted the trends, but both of them have actually run a few campaigns. This also explains why NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert, a veteran of electoral politics, so accurately predicted Florida as the linchpin of the 2000 election.

As the silly season progresses, speculation now is centering on who, if he wins the nomination, Kerry will pick for his running mate at the Democratic convention in Boston.

The political prognosticators who missed the Dean demise, especially some of the prattling peroxide pundettes, are now focusing on who will be Kerry’s running mate with the predictable proviso if they ” … can deliver their state.” To suggest that a vice presidential running mate brings a state demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the party process, the convention process and what a national convention means to a party.

With the notable exception of 1960, no vice presidential running mate ever delivered a state to his ticket, and as LBJ biographer Robert Caro has well documented, Lyndon Johnson didn’t deliver Texas to John Kennedy as much as he stole it.

The wise men and women around presidential nominees and the better nominees themselves understand this simple, but apparently elusive fact: national conventions are one of the few times a party has the undivided or near undivided attention of the American people, and running mates are chosen to produce a unified convention and not deliver a state or a bloc of voters.

Conventions in the past that have either been divisive or controversial have tended to produce losing tickets in the fall. Conversely, national parties that produce unified conventions tend to win in the fall. Thus the Republicans, because of their divisive conventions in 1964, 1976, and 1992, lost in the fall. The same is true of the Democrats who lost at least partly because of divisive conventions in 1968, 1972, 1980, and 1984.

There are always exceptions, but the conventions of both the GOP and the Democrats in 1960 and 2000 are instructive. All four were by and large harmonious. All four were unified. The candidates were all well funded and their bases were energized. In both cases, Americans witnessed two of the closest presidential elections in American history.

Another axiom often overlooked about the two parties is that the Democrats rarely nominate their front-runner for president while the Republicans always do.

If Kerry wins the nomination and loses the election, it is a pretty safe bet that Sen. Hillary Rodham-Clinton, D-N.Y., will emerge from the wreckage as the front-runner for 2008 — which, if history is any guide, means she won’t be the nominee. If Bush wins the fall election, then Vice President Dick Cheney becomes the front-runner for the GOP — if he wants it.

(Craig Shirley is the president of Shirley and Banister Public Affairs and the author of the forthcoming book, “Reagan’s Revolution: the Untold Story of the Campaign that Started it All,” published by Thomas Nelson/WND Books.)

(United Press International’s “Outside View” commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

LOAD-DATE: March 2, 2004

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 2004 U.P.I.