Posted on 03/17/2011 6:28:55 AM PDT by Kaslin
The weakest part of our political system is the presidential nomination process. And it's not coincidental that it's the part of the federal system that finds least guidance in the Constitution.
There is no provision in the Constitution that says that Iowa and New Hampshire vote first. The idea of giving any two states a preferred position in the process of choosing a president would surely have struck the Framers as unfair.
But we are stuck with Iowa and New Hampshire voting first because no politician who contemplates ever running for president -- i.e., most politicians -- wants to arouse the ire of the political and journalistic establishments of Des Moines and Manchester.
Another feature of the nominating system is that it tends to exclude those with experience in foreign and military policy, the two areas in which presidents tend to have the greatest leeway.
Dwight Eisenhower did have such experience. And Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush had been vice presidents with varying degrees of involvement in foreign policy and military command.
But the other seven presidents of the last 60 years had to learn by doing. And Ford's ascent came not through the nomination process but through the 25th Amendment.
A third problem is that the lengthiness of the nomination process -- the permanent campaign, as Sidney Blumenthal dubbed it long ago -- means that a president, and the nation, may be stuck with an agenda set as much as 10 years before he leaves office.
And that's in the best case, when a candidate presents a series of policy initiatives to caucus-goers, primary voters and the general electorate, and then tries to follow through in office, as George W. Bush and Barack Obama can claim to have done.
In the worst case, a candidate briefly captures the imagination of impressionable activists and voters with personal glamour and vaporous rhetoric, and then edges ahead of his rivals to clinch a nomination in a good year for his party.
That's what some people think happened in 1976 with Jimmy Carter, though I think that's unduly harsh. Certainly it's a fair characterization of what might well have happened in 2008 if John Edwards had gotten a few more votes and come out ahead of Barack Obama as well as Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.
None of the politicians currently or possibly running for the 2012 Republican nomination seems to be a shameless charlatan like Edwards. But none except for former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has hands-on foreign policy experience either, and he obtained his as Barack Obama's ambassador to China.
The potential candidate who sparks the strongest emotions is Sarah Palin. But her non-spectacular showings in polls suggest that many Republicans, while agreeing that she has been unfairly treated by the press, believe she cannot win. The fates of Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell may have been instructive here.
The candidate whom some pundits call the front-runner, Mitt Romney, is hobbled by the fact that the agenda he put together in 2005-06 for his 2008 candidacy contains elements that are undercut by his previous record (on abortion, for example) or are out of line with Republican voters' current thinking (Romneycare).
Romney and Mike Huckabee, good-humoredly fluent and seemingly happy as a Fox News host, both lost the 2008 nomination to a candidate whose strategy was to wait for all the other candidates' strategies to fail. Not a good augury for 2012.
Others carry baggage from the past. Newt Gingrich is sidling up to a candidacy with, as always, a raft of new ideas, many of them good, and some brilliantly penetrating insights, but not much discipline. Rick Santorum, having lost his Senate seat by a 59 percent to 41 percent margin in 2006, is campaigning on the conviction that cultural conservatism will be as important to Republican voters in this cycle as it was from 1988 to 2000.
Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels approach running with records as two-term governors and with the chance to propose fresh agendas. But for the moment they're overshadowed as congressional Republicans try to seize the initiative on major policy.
It is easy to see at least one reason why each of these potential candidates must lose. But our unsatisfactory nomination process, for all its faults, is a zero-sum game in which one player must win.
I want all primaries on the same day. Only registered Republicans allowed to vote.
Dishonest and incompetent politicians.
Let the 50 governors meet in DC to draw from a hat presided over by the Chief Justice.
The weakest part of the US political system is the ignorant, lazy and stupid voter.
I hate this particular canard. The problem with Angle and O'Donnell was precisely that the lacked the very savvy and political experience that Palin has used to climb up from local government to potential President.
You got that right
Barone, an elitist who is embittered because candidates aren’t chosen by smart people like himself.
Overly favors candidates with high bankrolls. The current system needs a lot of work, but it does allow someone to come in with megabucks and show that they can be competitive, which can lead to getting the fundraising necessary to continue.
Only registered Republicans allowed to vote.
Amen to that. And anyone who switches registrations from another party needs to do so at least 6 months prior to the primary.
The weakest part of our political system is that welfare recipients get to vote. The freeloaders shouldn’t have a say in who gets elected because it is in their self-interest to steal more from the productive class. Only those that pay taxes should vote, and the value of their vote should correlate with the amount of tax that they pay.
“With megabucks” should be “without megabucks”.
One of these days, I’ll actually USE preview instead of blindly hitting “post” after the forced preview.
We'll see. Frankly I don't believe the polls. The only polls that count are those taken in a primary.
I really don't think that is the case. Yes the media have been horrible; but that is not the only explanation. Sarah Palin's case was hers to make and she certainly got the air time to make it. Her first speech was awesome; it had everyone ready to hear more. Over the last year, she has offered little more in depth. In my opinion, she prepared that case badly and it simply did not sell.
"No representation without taxation."
The current squatter soiling the White House.
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Absolutely disingenuous. Palin did not use politital savvy or experience at all to get to the national spotlight. She was plucked from near obscurity by McCain.
You make it sound as though she has been planning this all her life. The truth is, as I'm sure you know, if Juan had not picked her name out of the hat almost nobody would even know it.
I knew about her in the winter (early 08) before McCain picked her. I liked what I saw then, but didn't expect she would ever get picked.
Next time discuss the article.
She worked her way up from local government to Governor of a state without being "plucked from obscurity" by anybody. It's not farfetched to think that any Governor (excepting ineligible ones like former MI Governor Granholm) would be considering a run for national office.
As noted by palmer, many of us knew who she was before McCain selected her, although few thought he would do so. She was on my short list of about 3 or so potential VPs that could actually help McCain.
Come on Michael, that is precisely how Øbongo claimed the prize. Admit it and move on.
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