The presidential announcement is a rare act of campaigning over which the candidates have near-total control. They pick the timing, venue, and message. Only the weather is left to chance, and the good candidates shape that too. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower spoke in the rain at his boyhood home of Abilene, Kansas. He joked about the rain in the English Channel, a casual way to remind anyone who needed it that he had led the successful D-Day invasion there.
A look at the announcements of the past 70 years shows that one change is obvious: Presidential hopefuls used to declare their candidacy in a single speech; now the process is drawn out with peekaboo hints, social-media announcements that lead to explorations, and talk-show teases. It’s like an Advent calendar, but no one gets a square of chocolate.
Other than the slow roll of the rollout, though, presidential announcements have followed an essential pattern. A candidate identifies the problems in America, assures the audience that they can be solved through the application of what Walter Mondale in his 1983 announcement called “some old American values that do not need any update,” and then presents the country’s condition as a puzzle that’s missing one piece, the shape of which the candidate embodies perfectly.
The announcement speeches on the Democratic side this year tell us that the candidates are spoiling for a fight. And they’re not being subtle about it. Senator Kamala Harris used the word fight or a variant nearly 20 times in her announcement speech. She promised to take back America, an implicit challenge to the incumbent who promised to deliver greatness to America. Senator Elizabeth Warren used the same word just as much when she announced her bid. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand brought the idea home: “I will fight for your kids as hard as I would fight for my own.” Combat was the theme also of Donald Trump’s announcement in 2015. Within a minute of taking the lectern, he had promised to beat China, Japan, and Mexico.