Repairing the primary process
By Libby
Updated below
I hate to link to David Broder but he touches on a subject I addressed briefly the other day and while he gets it mostly wrong, he's right about one thing -- our primary selection process is broken and needs to be fixed.
Broder proposes some convoluted rotating schedule of contests, with decisions being made by the the two major party chairs. Right. Just what we need is to give the political machine more power to manipulate the process. That's what got us into this mess in the first place and Broder's protestations about the inability of candidates to appear personally in all the states is a crock anyway. The way the system is set up, unless you live in a key state, most voters make their choice without getting a chance to personally glad-hand the candidates anyway.
Most people that actually show up and vote get the majority of their information from the internet and there's no dearth of it. For the elderly and others who aren't wired, there's no reason the candidates couldn't be given a series of televised forums in which they could present their platforms, other than it might slightly interfere with corporate profit making. And I'm not talking about these miserable excuses for "debates" they are currently foisting off on the public. Those are little more than showcases for the talking heads on whatever station snags the event. Give every candidate a set amount of time to present their creds. Can the stupid questions and limit the moderation to quelling interuptions and enforcing time limits on the talk.
That's the trouble with aging pundits, they don't understand that it's a new age in communication. Technological advances have made the conventional wisdom obsolete. It's possible and indeed practical to level the playing field and hold a national primary -- a simple solution that would serve the public best. Of course that's precisely why dinosaurs like Broder and his fellow Beltway media elite would never support it. It would make their pompous pontificating obsolete as well.
Update: Surprisingly Moe Lane at Redstate agrees with me.
Updated below
I hate to link to David Broder but he touches on a subject I addressed briefly the other day and while he gets it mostly wrong, he's right about one thing -- our primary selection process is broken and needs to be fixed.
Broder proposes some convoluted rotating schedule of contests, with decisions being made by the the two major party chairs. Right. Just what we need is to give the political machine more power to manipulate the process. That's what got us into this mess in the first place and Broder's protestations about the inability of candidates to appear personally in all the states is a crock anyway. The way the system is set up, unless you live in a key state, most voters make their choice without getting a chance to personally glad-hand the candidates anyway.
Most people that actually show up and vote get the majority of their information from the internet and there's no dearth of it. For the elderly and others who aren't wired, there's no reason the candidates couldn't be given a series of televised forums in which they could present their platforms, other than it might slightly interfere with corporate profit making. And I'm not talking about these miserable excuses for "debates" they are currently foisting off on the public. Those are little more than showcases for the talking heads on whatever station snags the event. Give every candidate a set amount of time to present their creds. Can the stupid questions and limit the moderation to quelling interuptions and enforcing time limits on the talk.
That's the trouble with aging pundits, they don't understand that it's a new age in communication. Technological advances have made the conventional wisdom obsolete. It's possible and indeed practical to level the playing field and hold a national primary -- a simple solution that would serve the public best. Of course that's precisely why dinosaurs like Broder and his fellow Beltway media elite would never support it. It would make their pompous pontificating obsolete as well.
Update: Surprisingly Moe Lane at Redstate agrees with me.
Labels: Election 08, election reform, politics
posted by Libby Spencer at 11:36 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home