Deliver us from the rubber stamp

The idea of a national primary keeps getting floated as a solution to all our electoral woes. MyDD's Jerome Armstrong is on this today.

Despite my confirmed irritation with Iowa and New Hampshire voters getting first crack at those who would be president, I'm not sure a national primary is the answer.

It's a cliché, but if the nomination goes to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in a single, national primary – all campaigns for president must be national. Period.

No campaign will ever start small and grow into a national candidate – they must have the bucks and logistics to cover all the states (or enough of the population centers) to win.

This election has shown us candidates who do not have national legs (Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, John Edwards) and while they have clearly been given short shrift by the media – were this a national primary, they'd have never gotten into the race at all.

Armstrong links to an article from Democracy Journal where Kenneth Bauer asserts that a national primary will not endanger "retail politics" (something I'd concede) and rebuts my particular objection with :

It’s at this point that someone pulls the Jimmy Carter card, arguing that the current system enables a relative unknown to emerge. This idea is as dated as a can of "Billy Beer." Carter is, in fact, the only candidate to have made such a journey, and even he made important moves to build support during the Invisible Primary, winning, for instance, the Iowa State straw poll in 1975. And Carter benefited immensely from being the first candidate to exploit fully the dynamics of the new nominating system.

Assuming he's right about Carter (a fair assumption) Armstrong's argument gets boiled down to: "The door's practically shut on emerging candidates now, why not slam it?"

I don’t agree. While the political establishment would never go for it- the idea that the nomination begin in a few states before going to a wider set of states I think has merit. My chief objection is that the order is fixed in stone – Iowa and New Hampshire always get the Pole Position. The established powers always know what ground they will be battling on.

You set up a system where the order changes from time to time, and I think you afford the outsider a (slim) chance to get in – and you add some variables to the mix.

I mean, look at the primary we have now – the states were all jostling for position in the primary season and we've ended up with primaries after Super Tuesday that actually matter. (Yes, I understand that Super Delegates can F that up, but stay with me…)

Candidates may break under the relentless strain of campaigning – but we're seeing states voting with enthusiasm – people are just so happy to be asked their opinion (as opposed to being informed who their party's candidate will be, and won't-you-please-pull-the-only-lever-you-have?).

Making it a national primary will ensure that my vote is counted, but it will also ensure that my choices of candidates will be limited in a process I have absolutely no say in.