Politics and elections 81House of Representatives for Missouri and Wesley Clark, a former General
in the US Army, who had served as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.
In 2003, before the caucuses and primaries for the presidential election of
2004 got under way, Howard Dean had been very successful in gathering sup-
port. He had raised considerable sums of money and had developed the use
of the internet to communicate with potential supporters to an extent never
before attempted by presidential aspirants. Towards the end of the year he
was clearly well ahead in the public opinion polls, suggesting that he was
likely to get the nomination. However, in the Iowa caucuses held in mid-Janu-
ary 2004, Dean came third after Kerry and Edwards and in the first primary,
held in New Hampshire on 27 January he was in second place behind Kerry.
Kerry continued to win primary elections in a number of states, although
Clark beat him in Oklahoma and Edwards won first place in South Carolina.
Other candidates for the nomination who had done poorly gradually with-
drew; after Kerry won the primaries in Virginia and Tennessee, Clark with-
drew, leaving only Dean, Edwards and Kerry in the race. Dean withdrew after
coming third in the Wisconsin primary on 17 February and when Kerry won
eight of the nine primaries held on Super Tuesday, including the Southern
state of Georgia, Edwards withdrew, leaving John Kerry as the victor.
The primaries exhibit some of the most individualistic elements in Ameri-
can politics. It is possible for an almost unknown candidate to win a victory
over the established party organisation, and primaries also provide opportu-
nities for the voters to express their views and preferences, even for candi-
dates who are not technically up for election. Many primary laws allow the
voter to write in the name of a candidate, and so to cast a vote for a candidate
whose name does not appear on the ballot. The likelihood of such write-in
votes constituting a majority of the votes cast is small, and yet strange things
do happen in American politics. In the 1964 New Hampshire presidential
primary, Goldwater and Rockefeller were the names on the Republican bal-
lot, yet the winner of the primary was Henry Cabot Lodge, Ambassador to
Vietnam, who had not even campaigned, and who at the time of the election
was many thousands of miles away. A small group of enthusiastic supporters
urged the New Hampshire voters to write in Lodge’s name.
Thus primary elections introduce many complications into the rich com-
plexity of the American political scene. Introduced as a challenge to the
power of the professional politicians, they have made life more difficult for
that hardy breed and they have aided the tendency towards weaker party or-
ganisation that has been under way for several decades. Primaries have not,
of course, completely democratised the political parties. To the extent that
they have done so, they highlight the dilemma of the reformer in this field.
How does one break the power of an oligarchy without destroying altogether
the basis of strong leadership? If the parties were strongly ideologically ori-
ented, then party allegiance might be a substitute for organisational power
as a basis for the exercise of leadership, but they are not. Another alternative
might be the cohesive force of spoils and corruption but, although American