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The Presidential Nomination Process: American Politics at Its Best
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14403 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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6 / 1988 |
2,447 Words |
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Stephen Schneck
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Indicting the presidential nomination process is chic. Evidence of this fact is available in the op-ed columns of our daily papers. Nevertheless, the indictments are unfair and inaccurate. Indeed, the nomination process we have witnessed this year has proven itself to be robust, effective, and well suited to the needs of our political system.
To put this argument in perspective, consider the charges typically leveled against the nomination process. These fall into three rough categories. First, many charge that the nomination process does not work to select the best candidates. Second, critics claim that the process lacks sufficient support from the American people and thus that it lacks legitimacy within our framework of democratic political institutions. Finally, the process is indicted for undermining our political parties and the governability of the nation. On all counts, however, the indictment is wrong. The 1988 nominations truly meet the requirements of selection, legitimacy, and party, given the realities of today's politics.
Selecting great presidents
At least since Andrew Jackson's day, professional political critics have wondered, rhetorically, why great men are not elected president. The nomination process usually has been singled out for special blame, and the critics have a point. It goes almost without saying that the nominating process constitutes most of the sausage factory that produces our presidents. The critics see the process largely as a winnowing mechanism designed to cull the most unacceptable candidates until one survivor remains. With this notion in mind, critics are understandably chagrined with the process. It seems to them that it is too long, too costly, too arbitrary in its culling. Most importantly, critics say the process is too demeaning and arduous to attract the right sort of candidates.
What is their evidence? By mid-June of this year, the total spending by presidential candidates will stand at about $220 million. The early-bird candidates started the nomination process more than three years ago with exploratory funding efforts and not-so-mysterious visits to Iowa. In contrast, the critics point to the selection of executives in the rest of the free world, where the processes are measured in weeks instead of years and in tens of thousands instead of hundreds of millions of dollars. Margaret Thatcher spent less than $100,000 in her most recent campaign, and the selection process lasted about a month and a half. The critics underscore the "B-movie" or "peanut-farm" quality of U.S. candidates before elaborating on the European leader as a multilingual policy expert wallpapered with diplomas. The tortuous Rube Goldberg contraption that is the American nomination process fails us, they say. Replace it with something more elegant and rational in the manner of the rest of the world's democratic regimes. Replace it with a process that gives us a great man as president.
Such comparisons are fundamentally flawed and patently unfair. By its Constitution and tradition, the U.S. government demands an executive greatly different from the parliamentary executives of most democracies--who are able to govern through disciplined, powerful national party organizations. Thatcher's constituency is the Conservative Party in Parliament; to govern effectively, she need only have the support of the party she leads. Her party, furthermore, is an enduring national policy-making organization that
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