New Face of American Democracy

Spectacle. Excitement. Good video. Now that the 2008 Presidential race is in full swing, in 2007, we have all of that and more to look forward to. Threre are more than ten official and unofficial racers on each side of the aisle, embarking on the much-trodden path to the White House. In just seven short months, the first of the lucky inhabitants of Iowa will get to cast a ballot for whoever remains of this host. Then the citizens of New Hampshire get a cut at the crowd that remains for them to choose. The following states and voters who may or may not get a meaningful say is hard to determine at this early date. At the present moment state legislatures all over the nation are trying to determine if it in the state's best interest to spend the millions of dollars to conduct a statewide special election to decide who the state's various Democratic and Republican convention delegates will cast their first-ballot votes for.
This is all very different from the way that these things were conducted in campaigns past. The first candidate selected by primary voters was Senator George McGovern in 1972. After Vice President Hubert Humphrey had been selected in the 1968 convention after not having run in a single primary election, McGovern headed a commission that reformed the nominating process. The 1972 convention picked McGovern and the 1976 Convention that selected Jimmy Carter was the last convention where the Candidate was not known beore the convention started.

Now the only drama in the process takes place a full year and a half before the convention. Now candidates beg for money from big corporate contributors and the ones that cant draw enough money from contributors are forced to quit, many times before a single vote is cast. In this way, money has come to replace political capital. A candidate like George W Bush can starve any and all opponents of the means to attract voters, removing their ability to persuade, because now the campaign is like all elections, except far more vast. The campaign for the modern presidential nomination entails travelling all over the nation, not just in one state. It involves purchasing tons of media time and employees for every primary that they plan to compete in. It involves persuading an uninvolved public about usually trivial matters, in comparison to the weighty matters that will actually be decided in running the Executive Branch.

Contrast this with the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. The political front runners were assured of the first ballot votes of the delegations from their own states. All of the participants were involved, informed and engaged. There were no primaries at all. The nominee was not decided until many ballots had been cast. (In fact, the most ballots ever cast in a nominating convention was 103, in 1924.) None of the front runners won the nomination.

Let's think a moment about what the current process gets us. Potential candidates must test the waters to see if there is enough 'public' support for thier candidacy. This of course means that they are finding out if there are any donors for their cause. Possibly a dozen will determine that they might take the chance. The media begins to focus on the candidates, looking for any personality quirks, foibles, or gaffes. Any sentence uttered could mean instant doom to their chances. Little attention is paid to the ideas involved. Much attention is paid to how much their grooming or clothing costs.

In campaigns recently past there may be three states whose delegates will be chosen by popular vote. Iowa will hold a caucus where sleepy Iowans will gather at caucuses around the state and cast votes that are non-binding (except in the mind of campaign financers). Then, typically it is off to New Hampshire, where a real presidential primary will occur. This election features the ability of voters to vote in the other party's primary. So we have the prospect of voter's whose candidate is reasonably certain taking advantage of the opportunity to select their candidate's opponent. Next it has been "off to South Carolina" or "Super Tuesday" or whatever. The next stop is usually the last for ever candidate except the nominee. So, as a general rule, the delegates to the national convention are going to a party. The voters of possibly three states get to do the job that formerly took the delegates of fifty states many rounds of voting to do. Delegates that were picked by millions of Americans to represent their states at the national convention have been stripped of every value that this process used to provide and now are reduced to a cheering backdrop for a candidate that was picked by large donors betting that their contributions are buying the ear of a President.