If you want to fix American politics … first fix the primary system

If you’re as perplexed with American politics as I am, we need to address the current primary system that determines the final Republican and Democrat candidates for President.

Right now it’s a game.  A crazy game, run by crazies.  It’s completely irrational and illogical. 

Because of arcane rules and mindless tradition we give disproportionate power to states and voting blocs that aren’t in the slightest stretch of the imagination representative of the voting public at large.  

Our current primary system might as well been designed by Jerry Springer or championship wrestling.  Primaries don’t so much pick good candidates as they do “champions” for some point of view or another.  Abortion.  Immigration.  Same-sex marriage.  Gun control.  English as the official language.  School prayer.   Teaching Creationism.  Whatever.       

People running in the primaries know this stuff doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in the everyday lives of ordinary citizens.  But they also realize these give a woody to certain interest groups.  And those groups really turn out to vote in primaries and donate big to campaigns. 

Competency to actually be President, and manage the country well, doesn’t seem to matter. 

So instead of a system where the most competent, articulate and rational win after thoughtful consideration of their ideas, we get a sideshow where someone can be a complete clown bereft of any practical ideas, spout the silliest nonsense about irrelevant issues, and still manage to win a bunch of primaries. 

As long as they mobilize their respective extremists, of course. 

The winners are typically far out of the mainstream  of what most Americans believe.  The edge usually goes to the most polarized and divisive able to rally a statistically small number of like-minded extremists.  Most Americans don’t vote in primaries anyway, so the hardcore tend to tip the scales. 

The face-to-face debates have devolved into bitching, name-calling, back-biting and outrageous claims and half-truths designed to make the other participants appear evil and untrustworthy.  It’s all theatrics as they play to the crowds.  We’re just missing someone breaking a folding chair over their opponents’ heads, or bitch-slapping each other.  Roadrunner cartoons have more civility and substance. 

However, the real mayhem starts with the state primaries.  That’s when the true loons emerge.  And when people who have no more in common with you and me than we do with a Chinese aviator get to start the crazy train rolling. 

Many times this happens in states that – except for their primaries – would otherwise be a blip on the national scene.  Yet when they have a primary, the media and pundits gush all over them.  Everybody looks to them to see the “trends”; to see who has the best “ground game.”  Who is excelling at “retail” politics?

Potential candidates spend millions to woo a relative handful of voters.  To show they’ve got “momentum.”  But mostly so they can get more money from their donors to stay on this dysfunctional merry-go-round.  More money to waste on making them a celebrity, in other words. 

In the end, it’s lots of sound and fury signifying nothing.  It doesn’t mean squat. 

For example, who really cares who wins the Ames Straw Poll or Iowa Caucus? 

Iowa is not like the rest of the country.  The total population of Iowa is a little more than 3 million; it’s 30^th in state populations in the U.S.  There are – what – maybe 500-1000 black people in the entire state?  The biggest city in the state only has a population of about 207,000. 

So a bunch of pasty-white people from there standing around in a high school gym is not representative of who is going to turn out and vote in the rest of the country.  Or what the hot-button issues are for the rest of the country.  Farm subsidies and ethanol might be big for Iowans; not so much for the rest of us. 

Yet every election cycle we see potential candidates going door to door, sitting in coffees shops, and blathering on about meeting Iowans’ needs and supporting their parochial “values”  to first win the straw poll and then the “caucus.” 

Seriously, who cares?  This meaningless campaigning only boosts media spending in Iowa, fills rooms in hotels you wouldn’t stay in on a dare, and gives a financial lift to every hayseed diner in the state. 

Maybe Jed and Clem in their bib’alls and John Deere hats having a cup of joe at the coffee shop of the Dew Drop Inn make for good TV.  Breathless reporters from the East clearly hang on their every word.  That these yokels like this candidate or that because they promise to keep sorghum prices high, and keep prayer at high-school football games, doesn’t mean diddly to me, nor to most other Americans. 

Certainly, Jed and Clem and their Iowa ilk are entitled to their opinion, and I respect that.  Should we let them have a disproportionate influence on who gets to run for President?  Absolutely not. 

And thank God for that. 

Otherwise, we’d have had Michelle Bachmann (Ames Straw Poll) or Rick Santorum (Caucus) running for the Republicans.  If you think Obama handily beat Romney, just think what he would have done to Bachmann or Santorum.  It would have been a landslide victory of epic proportions. 

Yes, witchy, twitchy, far-right extremist Michelle won first in Iowa, and uber-Catholic Santorum also won.  

Could you honestly see either as a serious national candidate?  Now you may agree with a few of their positions, but do you think either was qualified for the office?  Would you want to see them imposing their ideas on the rest of us?  Iowans did. 

Apparently quite a few others thought Santorum was a good choice, too – at least according to primary results.  He won 11 primaries and garnered about 3 million votes in the process.  Not to beat up on Santorum, but his views are so outside the mainstream he’s not an outlier as much as an alien from a galaxy far, far away.  He makes Carrie Nation look like a wanton libertine. 

There is absolutely no way in Hell he could have won the Presidential race.  But he was able to win primaries. Why?  Because the radical far right came out to support him and everybody else stayed home.

And that’s the biggest flaw in the primary system.  You can play small ball on extremely narrow issues that appeal to a relative handful of people.  If you can get them excited enough – or fearful enough – to put down their Moonpies and RC Colas, skip Duck Dynasty or Here Comes Honey Boo Boo for a few minutes, and turn out to vote, you can win. 

God help us.  But that’s how we end up with a former community organizer and do-nothing first-term Senator competing against a socially and politically awkward guy for the most powerful job in the world. 

The job should go to the best qualified.  Not the best at playing the game. 

So what’s the solution?

Instead of the state-by-state primaries, have one primary nationally, on one day.  Like national elections, you’d have to be a registered voter and you could only vote once.  That means on primary day you’d have to choose to vote in the Republican primary or the Democrat primary – or a third party if it could qualify – for the candidate of your choice.  You couldn’t vote in more than one. 

You could have debates for each party in advance.  But there would have to be a threshold for participation – you’d have to get 3 million validated, unique signatures for your candidate across the country to make the cut.  If you fall short of that, you’re out of the debates and off any ballots.

The winners for each party would be set, immediately, and for far, far less than they now spend. 

The media in every state will scream because of the loss of revenue.  So will all the mom and pop hotels, motels and diners in the middle of nowhere.  You won’t have TV crews and talking heads camped out in East Jabip, North Dakota to “take the pulse of the heartland.”  No more meet-and-greets in diner coffee-klatches.  No more “we’re here in the living room of Mabel Plotz in West Chitlin Switch, West Virginia to get her impression of the candidates.”   No more “comeback kid” analogies.  No more “big Mo” references.  And no more meaningless photo ops in someplace you never heard of. 

Candidates will have to run national campaigns based on issues relevant to the whole country, instead of pandering to purely parochial interests.  This refreshing change might mean that they would finally have to deal with substance that affects us all, and we might get candidates worthy of the office.

One can only hope.