Mark Shields has a great column on this front-loading of the primary process. He points out that a national primary can only help the candidates who can raise the big bucks. Shields makes a great point when he writes:
With no small states like Iowa and New Hampshire at the very outset, totally absent from the nominating process will be "retail" politics, which requires presidential candidates to campaign person-to-person and to answer questions from ordinary Americans who are shopkeepers, teachers and homemakers. There is something profoundly democratic about a would-be president shivering in the frozen pre-dawn hours to shake the hands and ask for the votes of blue-collar workers.
This change will thrill the political handlers, who cannot control the risks of press coverage of their candidates' unscripted encounters with actual voters.
Dispel all illusions: Once the winnowed field of presidential candidates leaves New Hampshire, voters will see candidates only on TV, landing on airport tarmacs or being interviewed in studios.
This is not what we want as a nation, to please the political handlers by reducing everything to carefully scripted messages. There's absolutely no way to gauge the character of the candidate if you have no chance to meet him. And even though very few of us are able to meet presidential candidates, we can at least rely on the ordinary people in Iowa and New Hampshire to do that for us and give us their input. "When everyone is super, then no one will be." If everyone sells their stocks or houses at the same time, the price plummets and it's a buyers market. Every state cannot be first without the virtues of the present system being lost.
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