A lousy system

Spring will bring us tree pollen, ragweed, and presidential primaries. There are remedies at hand for most seasonal allergies but an antidote for these primaries, the sinusitis of American politics, seems out of reach.

In recent years a lot of labored breathing went into the politics of nominating candidates who wouldn’t necessarily make good presidents. We had nominees who looked good on television, who stood up best during constant jet whirl, mediocre meals and the attacks of media sharks and Internet bleaters.

This election, like the last, will be a test for bladders, ulcers, incipient phlebitis and brain cells. It is not a quality test for the White House.

And it’s a bum way to pick a president.

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Over half the voters in both major parties don’t care much for their presumed nominees. One is old and shows it, the other is a lunatic. The voters are saddled with Biden and Trump because the Democratic and Republican parties have forfeited control of campaigns. The power behind candidates is now leveraged wholly by cause lobbies. Primaries, once a test for leaders’ ideas and inclinations, are warped by the fat bankrolls and fever dreams of control groups. My way, or get out of the way. The quest for unlocked competition and generous debate is a political non-starter.

We came to this through the reforms of 50 years ago, when the McGovern crowd sought to do good by letting the people pick their own candidates. This was seen as a stout blow for democracy, yanking candidate selection from the party bosses chomping cigars in smoke-filled rooms. The result was a bewildering, interconnected system of state and regional primaries.

The emphasis on Super Tuesdays and super delegates has failed glaringly to produce the best candidates and has become less democratic, not more. (In primaries since 1972 fewer people have gone to the polls, not more, and even in the best years, only a minority bothered to vote. That’s hardly an improvement.)

In earlier days the party regulars who worked the streets, distributed the literature and raised the money had a chance for that trip to Miami or Chicago with the heady experience of being involved in the national game for the biggest stakes. They lost interest in doing all that groundwork only to be shoved aside while part-timers in political life were chosen as delegates. Presidential picking has become too predictable to give anyone satisfaction in party chores.

The workers who provided the backbone of the party system have mostly checked out, the parties mostly a shadow. Today we get candidates of the moment rather than statesmen for an era.

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The smoke-filled room was how, in presidential campaigns, we had candidates like Willkie, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. (We also had Harding, Coolidge, Hoover. No system is perfect.)

There is little evidence that the reforms pushed through in both parties in the 1970s and ’80s, or the bee swarms of super primaries beginning in the 90s, have helped the republic, the political parties, or the voters.

They have made the presidency an endurance contest. They have produced “position papers” which put voters to sleep. They have brought Madison Avenue techniques and Washington gut-punching to the presidency. They have replaced thoughtful analysis with tweets, and important speeches with Tik Tok moments. The “democracy” of the Internet pushes fraud on the electorate, placing mountebanks and poseurs on an equal plane with credible and thoughtful public servants. (Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert in a league with Liz Cheney and Lisa Murkowski? C’mon.)

The presidential selection process, now the tool of powerful pressure groups, is beyond our reach. A system that reduces our choice to Biden and Trump at this early date is overdue for an overhaul.