Friday, February 24, 2006
Fixing A Broken System
Here we are, just two years from the next primary season, and we have already been hearing about the "front runners" since the day after the 2004 election happened. What is certain in 2008 is another run through a dysfunctional primary system that rarely produces the "best" candidate.
This awful primary system has been with us since the 1972 election, in which the Democrats produced the candidate who just so happened rigged it as the chair of the commission that retired the convention system in favor of the political primary.
The political primary came as a result of the 1968 Democrat Primary, where convention insiders (Mayor Richard Daley) shut out the grassroots candidate in favor of the establishment candidate, leading to criticisms that came from all sectors and a pledge to reform the system so that the individual would have the pick, and not a political apparatchik, who bartered candidates in dark and smokey backrooms (at least that is what they tell us). And ever since the 1972 presidential election (the first in which the system was set in place), this process has done more damage to the political system than any amount of backroom trading. How so?
1st, rather than empowering the individual voter over the party boss, it ended up empowering the individual candidate over the individual voter and the political party. The reforms gave us candidate-centered campaigns, which relied upon a lot of money in order to buy a lot of media attention. The by-product? The rise and influence of interest groups to provide the money needed to either run competitive elections or to act as scare-off to would be challengers. Thus we end up with scandals involving these candidates--incumbent and challenger--who put into effect some very creative things in order to circumvent the law and raise as much money as possible.
2d, the media foisted into the role of political party, which vetts candidates to remove the wheat from the chaff, winnows the field down to the point in which it chooses the winner of the nomination. How do they do this? By looking at the start--this pre-primary stage--to see who has raised a credible amount of money before the race even starts, testing the name recognition of the candidate and then, once the race starts, by focusing on the "front runners" while withholding coverage to long shot or sure losers, and then the placing the crown upon the winning candidates head. All with a number of elections still to go in the primary season. If you doubt this, just look at the 2004 election and think of the coverage given to Dean, Kerry, and Edwards vs. the coverage granted to Kucinich, Sharpton, and Mosley-Braun.
3d, the lopsided influence to the states that go first in this process, particularly Iowa (first caucus) and New Hampshire (first primary). Two states, identical in the fact that they are sparse in population and largely homogeneous. New Hampshire citizens like to boast that they don't make up their minds on a candidate until they have first met all of them for the second or third time. All of the rest of us out here in the hinterlands never get to see all of the candidates, or for that matter, more than one (serious) candidate.
So how might we begin to reform this messed up system? How can we bump the snooty New Hampshire and Iowa citizens right off their perch? New Hampshire, it should be added, is under assault from the Libertarians, and they get to pick our candidates? It won't be easy. Both Iowa and New Hampshire have written their "first in the nation" status into their state law. New Hampshire law states:
The presidential primary election shall be held on the second Tuesday in March or on a Tuesday selected by the secretary of state which is 7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier. 1
The law in Iowa reads almost the same. Iowa and New Hampshire could care less what this system is doing, and has already done to American elections. So long as there is money to be made, to hell with the rest of this.
Not that selfish state interest was all that surprising. John Donahue outlines this, and other problems of "devolution" in his wonderful piece "The Devil in Devolution." In it, Donahue correctly argues that without federal intervention, left to their whiles the states all engage in a "race to the bottom." It happened with divorce laws and it happened with the political primary.
So what to do?
It is clear that a return to the days of the convention are not going to happen. It is to the incentive of each individual politician to keep control over winning or losing the nomination in the hands of the candidate--not the party bosses. So some modification of the current system seems to be in order.
First, as Anthony King argued in 1997, for congressional elections in which an incumbent faces no opposition or only token opposition, the primary should simply be cancelled.
Second, there are all sorts of modified primary system. Some argue for a national primary, similar to the general election. Ideally this system would get rid of the front-loaded process, in which those candidates who do well out of the shoot cause many other, viable candidates to drop out of the race. In this case, one shot and that's it, for everyone. Unfortunately it does not get rid of a major problem in the process, and that is money. Since all only get one shot, it will be all the more important to maximize the candidate's exposure in as many states as possible. So rather than meeting the candidate in person, most of us will have to sit through months of advertising--not Christmas advertising--but political advertising. An additional proposal would suggest not a national primary, but rather several regional primaries where candidates would have to answer to the voters of a particular region. Thus a "favorite son" could count on his or her region to keep them in the game. But this process also suffers from two of the problems with the present system--those who do well in the first race have a boost over the other candidates AND it does not do anything to address the money situation. Well-funded candidates will have the resources to stay viable through the races where they are not a "favored son."
Then there is the "American Plan," which is something only a political scientist would love because it is a multistaged, complex process that helps "the little guy" while also respecting large state influence, and in the end makes perfect sense according to a set of game theoretic models that tells us it works. Don't believe me? Here is how the description of the process begins:
"The system features a schedule consisting of ten intervals, generally of two weeks, during which randomly...."
See what I mean?
In the end, any suggestion of reform gets shot down before it can even get started because it 1) doesn't address the money problem, 2) it doesn't get rid of front-loading, 3) other solutions are not better than mine.
I would suggest that any other solution should be tried before we shoot it down as worse than what we have. It is my belief that anything cannot be worse than what we have.
1. Butler, R. Lawrence. Claiming the Mantle: How Presidential Nominations Are Won and Lost Before the Votes are Cast. Cambridge: Westview Press. 2004. pg. 20.
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This awful primary system has been with us since the 1972 election, in which the Democrats produced the candidate who just so happened rigged it as the chair of the commission that retired the convention system in favor of the political primary.
The political primary came as a result of the 1968 Democrat Primary, where convention insiders (Mayor Richard Daley) shut out the grassroots candidate in favor of the establishment candidate, leading to criticisms that came from all sectors and a pledge to reform the system so that the individual would have the pick, and not a political apparatchik, who bartered candidates in dark and smokey backrooms (at least that is what they tell us). And ever since the 1972 presidential election (the first in which the system was set in place), this process has done more damage to the political system than any amount of backroom trading. How so?
1st, rather than empowering the individual voter over the party boss, it ended up empowering the individual candidate over the individual voter and the political party. The reforms gave us candidate-centered campaigns, which relied upon a lot of money in order to buy a lot of media attention. The by-product? The rise and influence of interest groups to provide the money needed to either run competitive elections or to act as scare-off to would be challengers. Thus we end up with scandals involving these candidates--incumbent and challenger--who put into effect some very creative things in order to circumvent the law and raise as much money as possible.
2d, the media foisted into the role of political party, which vetts candidates to remove the wheat from the chaff, winnows the field down to the point in which it chooses the winner of the nomination. How do they do this? By looking at the start--this pre-primary stage--to see who has raised a credible amount of money before the race even starts, testing the name recognition of the candidate and then, once the race starts, by focusing on the "front runners" while withholding coverage to long shot or sure losers, and then the placing the crown upon the winning candidates head. All with a number of elections still to go in the primary season. If you doubt this, just look at the 2004 election and think of the coverage given to Dean, Kerry, and Edwards vs. the coverage granted to Kucinich, Sharpton, and Mosley-Braun.
3d, the lopsided influence to the states that go first in this process, particularly Iowa (first caucus) and New Hampshire (first primary). Two states, identical in the fact that they are sparse in population and largely homogeneous. New Hampshire citizens like to boast that they don't make up their minds on a candidate until they have first met all of them for the second or third time. All of the rest of us out here in the hinterlands never get to see all of the candidates, or for that matter, more than one (serious) candidate.
So how might we begin to reform this messed up system? How can we bump the snooty New Hampshire and Iowa citizens right off their perch? New Hampshire, it should be added, is under assault from the Libertarians, and they get to pick our candidates? It won't be easy. Both Iowa and New Hampshire have written their "first in the nation" status into their state law. New Hampshire law states:
The presidential primary election shall be held on the second Tuesday in March or on a Tuesday selected by the secretary of state which is 7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier. 1
The law in Iowa reads almost the same. Iowa and New Hampshire could care less what this system is doing, and has already done to American elections. So long as there is money to be made, to hell with the rest of this.
Not that selfish state interest was all that surprising. John Donahue outlines this, and other problems of "devolution" in his wonderful piece "The Devil in Devolution." In it, Donahue correctly argues that without federal intervention, left to their whiles the states all engage in a "race to the bottom." It happened with divorce laws and it happened with the political primary.
So what to do?
It is clear that a return to the days of the convention are not going to happen. It is to the incentive of each individual politician to keep control over winning or losing the nomination in the hands of the candidate--not the party bosses. So some modification of the current system seems to be in order.
First, as Anthony King argued in 1997, for congressional elections in which an incumbent faces no opposition or only token opposition, the primary should simply be cancelled.
Second, there are all sorts of modified primary system. Some argue for a national primary, similar to the general election. Ideally this system would get rid of the front-loaded process, in which those candidates who do well out of the shoot cause many other, viable candidates to drop out of the race. In this case, one shot and that's it, for everyone. Unfortunately it does not get rid of a major problem in the process, and that is money. Since all only get one shot, it will be all the more important to maximize the candidate's exposure in as many states as possible. So rather than meeting the candidate in person, most of us will have to sit through months of advertising--not Christmas advertising--but political advertising. An additional proposal would suggest not a national primary, but rather several regional primaries where candidates would have to answer to the voters of a particular region. Thus a "favorite son" could count on his or her region to keep them in the game. But this process also suffers from two of the problems with the present system--those who do well in the first race have a boost over the other candidates AND it does not do anything to address the money situation. Well-funded candidates will have the resources to stay viable through the races where they are not a "favored son."
Then there is the "American Plan," which is something only a political scientist would love because it is a multistaged, complex process that helps "the little guy" while also respecting large state influence, and in the end makes perfect sense according to a set of game theoretic models that tells us it works. Don't believe me? Here is how the description of the process begins:
"The system features a schedule consisting of ten intervals, generally of two weeks, during which randomly...."
See what I mean?
In the end, any suggestion of reform gets shot down before it can even get started because it 1) doesn't address the money problem, 2) it doesn't get rid of front-loading, 3) other solutions are not better than mine.
I would suggest that any other solution should be tried before we shoot it down as worse than what we have. It is my belief that anything cannot be worse than what we have.
1. Butler, R. Lawrence. Claiming the Mantle: How Presidential Nominations Are Won and Lost Before the Votes are Cast. Cambridge: Westview Press. 2004. pg. 20.
