Electric Politics | A Quaint Anachronism

New Hampshire map New Hampshire doesn't make sense. But neither do its foes. John Dean, for example, normally an astute observer, starts a thundering critique but ends on a faintly naive note: kludge a new, rotating, regional primary system, he says, to replace the old. The fix, however, can't be made at the endpoint of the national presidential primary process. We don't have better choices because we don't have a sufficient number of seasoned politicians working their way up from lower rungs of the national ladder, not — though this is a problem too — because the primaries have turned into a gated marketplace for ladders.

The only way (not just the best way) to cultivate a greater number of vetted candidates is to restore retail politics to the quotidian politician. We could, as Charlie Peters points out, ban political advertising. Or we could increase the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (my preferred option), forcing retail politics upon incumbents, with a ripple effect on other offices. But to imagine that the first and perhaps only time a presidential candidate has meaningful contact with actual voters in a national campaign should be in a primary goes very much against the grain of the system bequeathed to us.

While certain technical fixes may help, the proper framing for figuring out what to do must go well beyond the primaries themselves. No more would it work, for example, to talk about reforming the State Department or the Defense Department, internally and purely on their own terms, without realizing or accounting for the political environment acting upon them. Of course primaries take what the system gives them, but why not ask why the system can't produce better choices?



Home FAQ Contact Archive EP Store EP Alerts © 2008 ElectricPolitics	A Quaint Anachronism New Hampshire doesn't make sense. But neither do its foes. John Dean, for example, normally an astute observer, starts a thundering critique but ends on a faintly naive note: kludge a new, rotating, regional primary system, he says, to replace the old. The fix, however, can't be made at the endpoint of the national presidential primary process. We don't have better choices because we don't have a sufficient number of seasoned politicians working their way up from lower rungs of the national ladder, not — though this is a problem too — because the primaries have turned into a gated marketplace for ladders. The only way (not just the best way) to cultivate a greater number of vetted candidates is to restore retail politics to the quotidian politician. We could, as Charlie Peters points out, ban political advertising. Or we could increase the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (my preferred option), forcing retail politics upon incumbents, with a ripple effect on other offices. But to imagine that the first and perhaps only time a presidential candidate has meaningful contact with actual voters in a national campaign should be in a primary goes very much against the grain of the system bequeathed to us. While certain technical fixes may help, the proper framing for figuring out what to do must go well beyond the primaries themselves. No more would it work, for example, to talk about reforming the State Department or the Defense Department, internally and purely on their own terms, without realizing or accounting for the political environment acting upon them. Of course primaries take what the system gives them, but why not ask why the system can't produce better choices? Posted by George Kenney on January 12, 2008 1:49 PM « Watch This Show \| Main \| A Libertarian Spring » Share this post: Leave a comment Name Email Address URL Remember personal info? Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)

A Quaint Anachronism

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