Primary Calendar Choler

Sick puppy that I am, I was thrilled to discover that a high-minded presidential commission, led by Jimmy Carter and James Baker, cares about the schedule of presidential primaries for 2008. Just reading that prior sentence may tell you more than you need to know about my passions which, if this were the 19th century, might well have included Esperanto as a universal language.

Okay, I'm a hopeless goo-goo when it comes to improving the ways we nominate presidential candidates. Beginning with the 1996 campaign, the primaries and caucuses have all been clustered into a maddening blur after Iowa and New Hampshire. What this means is that most primary voters are effectively disenfranchised, since the rush to judgment causes any nomination fight to be ludicrously condensed. As the Carter-Baker Commission pointed out in its report issued Monday, "Less than 8 percent of the eligible electorate in 2004 cast ballots before the presidential nomination process was effectively over."

Before you sneer "So what?" think about this. In 2000, the fast-forward primary schedule drove John McCain from the race before he could test his maverick Republican appeal before a national audience.

Last time around, John Kerry was mostly nominated because he won Iowa and New Hampshire and was perceived as the de facto nominee. With the 2004 Democratic nomination race artificially foreshortened, the Bush campaign and its allies had plenty of time to target Kerry as a flipping-flopping windsurfer who probably bought his Vietnam medals on ebay.

Back in the good ol' days (like 1992), presidential politics proceeded at a rational pace that offered voters time for reflection and candidates a chance to hone their skills. Bill Clinton did not clinch the 1992 nomination until the California primary in early June. That victory gave him a dramatic boost that naturally flowed into his selection of Al Gore as his running mate and the Democratic Convention. The Carter-Baker Commission wants to return to that Clinton-era schedule by slating four monthly regional mega-primaries after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

While the commission proposal is far from ideal (the winner of the first 13-state regional primary may well become the de facto nominee), it does preserve the sainted first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary and tries to give the voters (and candidates) a chance to catch their breath. Of course, reform in time for the 2008 campaign is as likely as a balanced Bush budget. The Democrats currently have their 733rd internal party committee examining the presidential nomination rules, but Chairman Howard Dean predicted to a New Hampshire audience recently that "there will be a little surgery, not major surgery." This continuation of a front-loaded calendar probably means that if Hillary Clinton can survive Iowa and New Hampshire then she's the 2008 nominee, regardless of the verdict of Democrats in the other 48 states.

For those who want to believe that Karl Rove is responsible for every indignity in the universe, including the lack of leg-room when flying coach, here's another example. The best plan ever devised for reforming the primaries was put together by former GOP Senator Bill Brock and approved overwhelmingly in 2000 by the rules committee of the Republican Party. The smallest states, from Maine to Hawaii, would hold primaries and caucuses in February. Slightly larger states like Oregon and Connecticut would control March. Then pretty big states (think Massachusetts and Minnesota) would vote in April. And then the behemoths of politics (California, Texas, New York) would choose a nominee from the remaining candidates in May.

The Brock plan was set to be approved by the 2000 Republican convention (with the Democrats likely to follow suit) when a few influential states like Ohio objected to be treated like the caboose. Not wanting to do anything to jeopardize GOP unity at Bush's convention, Rove worked behind the scenes to scuttle this sensible non-partisan proposal. So remember this historical nugget in 2008 when the presidential nomination fights in both parties end with an abruptly slamming door around Groundhog Day.