Everything about the presidential election in the United States is different this time. There's a tycoon as a nominee, and a woman. The parties have new profiles and new priorities under Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. And for the first time in modern history, the nominating conventions are over early and the entire month of August is open for campaigning. This is terra incognita for candidates and commentators alike.
Ordinarily the general election campaign opens on Labour Day; that is a time-honoured tradition, and as recently as a third of a century ago, the Democrats, in recognition of the holiday and of the important role organized labour played in their party coalition, made it a practice to begin their presidential campaigns in Cadillac Square in Detroit. No longer – but that's not the only tradition that has fallen away. The new calendar, rendering August prime time for campaigning, calls for new approaches.
"This presents the candidates a new opportunity," former senator Paul G. Kirk Jr. of Massachusetts, a former chairman of the Democratic National Party, said in an interview. "My bet is that it will be used negatively. But it is an opportunity to be positive, to look to the future and to show vision."
Here's what to watch for as Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton, who are to get their first national security briefings this week from top American intelligence experts, embark on the final stage of their race for the White House.
How do the candidates use this new time?
Often candidates with little foreign policy experience try to fit in an overseas trip in the summer, in part to burnish their diplomatic experience, in part simply to get away from the annoyances of domestic presidential politics. And often those trips concentrate on what are known as the "three I's," which are Ireland, Italy and Israel – touchstones for important voting groups, especially for Democrats.
Ms. Clinton is unlikely to do so. She visited 112 countries and travelled about a million miles as secretary of state and can be considered a professional diplomat. Mr. Trump may undertake such a trip, but he has to be careful in selecting his venue.
As mayor of London, Boris Johnson once dismissed the Manhattan businessman's views as "complete and utter nonsense" and even said he would not visit New York because there might be a chance he could unwittingly bump into Mr. Trump. Now Mr. Johnson is the foreign secretary in the new Conservative government in Britain. So London is out. So, probably, are Berlin and Rome; Mr. Trump wants to avoid any comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini. Israel remains a possibility. One of Mr. Trump's daughters is a convert to Orthodox Judaism, and so a visit to Jerusalem might provide a poignant moment.
Otherwise, the two candidates may make selected forays into critical battleground states. Last week, Mr. Trump signalled that might be his intention, with a visit on Wednesday to Scranton, Pa., a blue-collar community that is the county seat of Lackawanna County, where Mr. Trump took 70 per cent of the vote in the April primary. The visit came just hours before Vice-President Joe Biden, a native of Scranton, addressed the Philadelphia convention. This could not have been a coincidence.
Nor was it a coincidence that Ms. Clinton and her newly minted running mate, Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia, left their convention last week to embark on a bus tour of Pennsylvania and Ohio, two vital swing states and two places where Mr. Trump finds supporters for his message aimed at the victims of idle manufacturing plants and economic distress.
What is the early role of these running mates?
Both Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, and Mr. Kaine are novices to national politics, though Mr. Pence served in the House and Mr. Kaine was chairman of the Democratic Party as recently as 2011, a role that required him to travel widely.
The role of a running mate is to serve loyally, often far from the presidential nominee, and oftentimes to act as the attack dog of the team. Mr. Trump plays that canine role with eagerness and aplomb, and so Mr. Pence will be looked for as the voice of experience befitting his decade in Congress, from 2003 to 2013.
For his part, Mr. Kaine has one task above all others. He must deliver Virginia into the Democratic column in November.
The Republicans took the state in every election from 1968 to 2004, but on the strength of the black vote in the coastal areas and in the cities and the suburban vote near Washington, Barack Obama captured Virginia in 2008 and did so again in 2012. Mr. Obama's Virginia vote in 2012, however, was only 51.2 per cent, so Mr. Kaine must be attentive to the state, which provides 13 electoral votes.
A reminder: Running mates don't always carry their states, as Paul Ryan (Wisconsin Republican, 2012), John Edwards (North Carolina Democrat, 2008), Lloyd Bentsen (Texas Democrat, 1988), William E. Miller (New York Republican, 1964) and Henry Cabot Lodge (Massachusetts Republican 1960), among many others, can attest.
There is little question, however, that Mr. Pence's Indiana will fall into the GOP column. Mr. Obama claimed it in a surprise in 2008 but before that, the Hoosier State voted Republican in every election since 1940, with the exception of 1964, when every Northern state sided with President Lyndon B. Johnson over Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona.
What is the nature of the two post-convention bounces, and will the polls bounce around until Labour Day – and beyond?
Mr. Trump won a nice bounce out of his Cleveland convention, and Ms. Clinton may well do so also in the wake of her Philadelphia convention, thereby negating Mr. Trump's momentary advantage. These early polls come with a warning label, however, as anyone who watched the 1988 campaign will warn. In that contest, Michael Dukakis raced ahead of George H.W. Bush by 17 percentage points before Labour Day, only to lose decisively in November, when he captured only 10 states.
The close proximity of the two conventions, one following another in an unusual arrangement designed to keep these conclaves out of conflict with televised coverage of the Brazil Olympics, may well minimize the size and length of these bounces. But they also offered a convenient point of contrast between the two parties and their nominees.
Are there any peripheral factors to keep an eye on in the coming weeks?
There is one major one, and that's Mr. Obama's approval ratings. The 44th President's popularity rose to 51 per cent in the latest McClatchy-Marist poll, even though seven Americans out of 10 believe the country is going in the wrong direction.
This could be an important early bellwether. Both parties subliminally are conducting themselves as if the November election is a referendum on Mr. Obama – Republicans because they sense weakness in the President and Democrats because they believe he possesses enormous residual appeal. If Mr. Obama's numbers stay high, that is a positive sign for Ms. Clinton. But if they fall again, that will be an important advantage for Mr. Trump. This is only one of many elements that remind the two candidates – and us all – that the outcome of the contest is not entirely in the hands of the two nominees, and that the election is still 14 weeks away.
David Shribman