Guest Articles

Iowa and New Hampshire

Same old, same old

by G. Terry Madonna & Michael L. Young

One definition of crazy is to keep doing diligently the same thing over
and over when it's not working. By that definition America's
presidential primary system is seriously loony, for with respect to
developing a democratic process to nominate candidates for president, we
have been doing the same thing over and over again for more than 60
years and it's not working. The glaring evidence of that failure looms
before us as the nation awaits the imminent Iowa caucuses and New
Hampshire primary now scheduled for early January--both nomination
events take place in small unrepresentative states that will largely
dominate if not determine the rest of the primary process. Iowa and New
Hampshire were supposed to be the warm up acts for the remainder of the
primaries, but instead they have once again become the main event.

It was not supposed to be like this: not in 1948 when the modern
presidential primary began with high hopes of opening up the process;
nor in 1952 when early television began to cover primary events and
Eisenhower's nomination seemed to confirm the efficacy of primaries; nor
in 1960 when Kennedy sealed his nomination by winning key primaries; nor
after 1968 when major reforms wrestled power from party bosses. Nor was
it supposed to happen in any of the subsequent efforts since then to
broaden the primary process beyond a few early states.

Nevertheless, the entire nominating apparatus is again fixated on Iowa
and New Hampshire, resulting in more candidate visits than ever; more
media coverage than ever; more TV commercials than ever; and more money
spent than ever. Once again the outcome of a presidential race may
depend on the results of two small unrepresentative states.

This cycle, as in cycles past, major efforts have been made by party
leaders to bring some balance to the primary process. To help, the
Democrats scheduled Nevada after the "big two" to add an ethnically
diverse state to the mix, but it has received scant attention and has
been completely irrelevant in the process. Maybe that is because Hillary
Clinton has a huge lead there, but maybe because it has no history of
mattering.

Then two big important states Florida and Michigan moved their primaries
into January to lessen the impact of Iowa and New Hampshire. But the
national parties responded by striping the delegations of their national
convention votes. Democratic candidates even have been forbidden to
campaign in Florida, the state at the center of the 2000 election and
one of the three most important states in the last two national
elections. No one really believes that Florida and Michigan delegates
won't be in their seats at their respective parties' national
conventions?

Worse perhaps is the pandemonium unleashed in the rush to create Super
Duper Tuesday. It is now clear that the mega 22-state delegate selection
day scheduled for February 5, has only aggravated the underlying
problem. The rush to be relevant and live within the party rules caused
states in pell-mell fashion to move their primaries into the dead of
winter. So there is now such a mishmash of them that their votes might
well just cancel each other out. In the end this again will mean that
the same early small states as always will likely determine the nominees
but it will merely take a month less than in previous cycles. And this
is what we call reform.

But why have well intended reform efforts to make primaries a more
deliberative and democratic process so utterly failed? It's a good
question and too rarely asked. In theory competitive party primaries
should have produced a broadly supported consensus nominee, more party
unity, and more open conventions. That's certainly what early reformers
like Robert La Follette expected when he championed the first primaries
in Wisconsin in 1908. But since the primary system became dominant in
the 1960's, few of these early expectations of the progressives have
been realized.

Part of the answer is the fragmentation of the process and the nature of
federalism itself. Presidential elections are 50 separate state
elections for the electoral votes of each state, not a national
election. And our nominating procedures are controlled by 50 different
states, within the parties' rules limitations, that vote at widely
different times over a six month process. When the early states vote,
many voters in other states not have thought deeply about their choices.
But the intense and concentrated coverage for Iowa and New Hampshire
introduce candidates to a national electorate as de facto "winners" or
"losers" before more than 90% of voters can cast ballots.

Consequently winners in New Hampshire and Iowa get an enormous bounce
while losers with rare exceptions (Clinton in 1992) are unable to
overcome weak performances in these early contests. Scholars argue
whether the combination of media spin and electoral results produce a
bandwagon effect that makes later voters gravitate to earlier winners.
But there is no argument that after Iowa and New Hampshire have voted
the race is probably over.

It is now too late to change this process for 2008. But it's exactly the
right time to consider changes for 2012 and beyond. The time has clearly
come for an overhaul of the entire chaotic process. Two major options
exist. One would produce a national primary while the second option
provides for the adoption of regional primaries. A real national primary
with every state participating on the same day has been proposed since
at least 1916 when Woodrow Wilson advocated it. Its major strength is
that potentially all Americans would have some role in the process.
Several versions of regional primary plans also have been proposed.
Common to all the regional plans, a designated region of the country
(i.e. northeast, south, west and central) would vote in alternate months
beginning in February of the presidential year. One regional plan, the
so-called American plan would give small and medium states earlier
primaries and larger states later primaries. A competing plan known as
the Delaware plan would create regions by allocating each state into one
of four population clusters based on population.

Congress will have to act to bring any of these plans to fruition. And
Congress should act. Sixty years of hard experience have taught us that
neither the states acting alone nor the major political parties have
been able to rationalize the process. Presidential elections are
national campaigns and we need national legislation to make sense of it.

**********************
Politically Uncorrected is published twice monthly. Dr. G. Terry Madonna
is Professor of Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College and Dr.
Michael Young is Managing Partner of Michael Young Strategic Research.
The article can be used in whole or in part with appropriate
attribution. The views and opinions found in this article represent the
authors' views and opinions and not those of any institution or
organization with which they are affiliated.
Previous columns can be viewed at
http://politics.fandm.edu, and Politically Uncorrected columns with a
national focus are archived at
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/g_terry_madonna_and_mic
hael_young/.

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