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The present nominating process is a prime example of reforms that have not worked. The 1968 Democratic Convention, an embarrassing spectacle dominated by Chicago's jowly Mayor Richard Daley and his helmeted riot police, inspired the party's liberals to push through a series of antiboss rules requiring a more open process. The number of delegates elected in primaries increased from 40% to 75%, and rules governing state conventions were liberalized; the "unit rule," requiring all of a state's delegates to vote the same way, was abolished, and more seats were made available for women, young people and minorities. The Republicans basically followed suit in 1972.
Whatever the merits of the reformers' goals, the net effect has been a nearly permanent presidential election campaign, which culminates in a 37-primary marathon that exhausts and bewilders both the candidates and the voters. It ultimately leaves the party leaders very little to do at the nominating conventions except put on straw hats and look interested. One of the most remarkable aspects of the thoroughly "reformed" 1980 Democratic Convention was that the 3,331 delegates included only 72 Governors, Senators and Congressmen. By contrast, the assembled delegates included 388 representatives of teachers' unions—one sign that at least part of the nominating machinery had been seized by special-interest groups composed of ideologues or amateurs.
The steady weakening of the political parties, combined with the steady growth of television as the prime mediator between the voters and the Government, means that the primary campaign now emphasizes the wrong issues and the wrong qualities. What is needed to win primaries is often quite different from what is needed to govern. Primary politics is the "politics of celebrity." Experience counts for little and sound policy for less. Indeed, the time required for shaking hands at factory gates, smiling triumphantly at barbecues and endorsing local candidates at gatherings of party faithful makes being unemployed (but rich) one of the major prerequisites for victory. To know anything is less important than to be known. The low arts of making deals and trading favors have been replaced by what perhaps may be the even lower arts of media manipulation and the 90-second film clip.
Nobody today advocates a return to the notorious smoke-filled rooms of the turn of the century, but certainly the recent reforms should themselves be reformed. Here is how:
-The campaign must be shortened. The first contest now is the Iowa caucus in mid-January, but the candidates have to start raising money long before that in order to get federal matching funds. One remedy—urged by former L.B.J. Aide Douglass Cater in a study for the Aspen Institute—would be to ban use of federal funds before the spring of an election year.