I Can’t Make Up My Mind!
Now that the Iowa caucasus and New Hampshire primary are history, the battle for the presidential nomination is in full swing. All of this will lead us up to February when more than 20 states will hold primaries.
In all, the February 5th elections will decide 1,081 Republican and 2,075 Democratic delegates. If a candidate does well on this one day, they can wrap up the nomination.
This year the Democrats will hold their convention August 25 - 28 in Denver. The Republicans will follow in Minneapolis, August 1 - 4.
But what’s the point? I mean the nominee will be pretty much decided in February, what’s the point of a nomination convention to be held some six months later?
I remember when I was young, my grandfathers would stay up into the night to see who the nominee would be. There was much speculation, many late night sessions, and finally the announcement, followed by the grand acceptance speech.
The next day, the talk of the town was what a grand fellow the party had nominated this time and all the party loyalist would begin making plans for showing their support.
Nowadays we have months of campaigning during the primaries, leading up to a non-event during the conventions, where we hear the same old speech given by a candidate who was just nominated to a position we all knew he won months ago!
Now I can’t say much about who this system of primaries has selected in the past. It seems to me that when you select the candidate by popular vote you are giving the public too many choices.
When the candidates were selected by the delegates at the convention, they selected the person who they believed was the best qualified and most likely to win. Now the person who can appeal to the most voters in primaries gets the nomination. The people running don’t need to be anything more that able to get their names on the ballots.
The candidates don’t have to be qualified, they don’t have to be long time supporters of their parties, in some memorable cases they can be barely literate!
So what am I trying to say? Well it is my humble opinion that if you give the people too many choices, you get a president that appeals to the lowest common denominator. The results of this kind of rating system can be seen by switching on your TV and seeing what shows are popular these days. Do you really want these people deciding who will lead our country?
Just like with children, the fewer choices you give them the easier it is. I say, go back to letting the party leaders decide who to nominate, then give the public the choice between two qualified candidates. Surely we can’t screw that up too much!