This Presidential Campaign is Starting Earlier than Ever

Blame the media — and Donald Trump

Presidential nominees used to be determined at the party’s convention. Not anymore. (Library of Congress collection, George Grantham Bain photo.)

By William S. Bike

It’s 20 months until the presidential election, and already Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, and Marianne Williamson have declared their candidacies — with Ron DeSantis and Joe Biden ready to jump in at any moment.

In the old days, presidential campaigns didn’t start this early. The whole reason for the party conventions that began in the 19th Century is that there weren’t national campaigns until the party actually picked its candidate. There might be a New England candidate, a Southern candidate, and a Midwestern candidate, so the convention was for deciding which of those would be the party’s nominee. So sometimes the convention would decide on somebody who hadn’t even been running to be the party’s presidential nominee. For example, in 1880 Congressman and non-candidate James Garfield gave a great speech at the Republican convention and the party figured, “Why not?” and made him its presidential nominee. And then he even got elected.

By the mid 20th Century, once we had TV and radio, candidates could run national campaigns before the convention because the media gave them an opportunity for publicity. But almost nobody declared until the actual year of the election. For example, as late as the 1968…