OK, I admit it. I’m jealous of New Hampshire.
I want to see Mitt Romney in my kid’s high school gym explaining why corporations are people.
I want to hear Rick Santorum outside my grocery store relating his belief that same-sex marriage is a gateway drug to polygamy.
I want Newt Gingrich to interrupt my breakfast at the diner to tell me how smart he is (not really).
Mostly, I want to have some say in the presidential selection process.
But living in Maine, or in any other state that isn’t New Hampshire or Iowa, that’s not going to happen. So I’ll have to settle for watching from afar, even if it’s just next door.
I accept that we can’t have what they have, so out of pure spite, I’m ready to say that they shouldn’t have it either.
That’s why I support the rotating regional primary supported by the National Association of Secretaries of State, which is a fantastic idea that can’t be proved wrong because it probably will never be tried.
The way it would work is this: The country would be divided into four regions, the Northeast, South, Midwest and West. All of the states in each region would hold a primary or caucus on the same day. The four primaries would be held a month apart starting in March and would finish in June, not long before the nominating conventions.
Keep in mind, that the primary system we have now is kind of a novelty. It was developed after the violent Democratic National Convention of 1968 by a commission chaired by then-Sen. George McGovern. He oversaw the creation of the new rules and then took advantage of them to be nominated for president in 1972.
The current system bears no relation to the presidential selection process described in the Constitution, and was not used to nominate Washington, Lincoln or either Roosevelt. The system we have now is not that old, it’s not that effective and we could change it any time we wanted.
A regional primary system would make the nominating process start later and last longer than what is currently in place, especially if the order of the primaries was chosen by lottery and candidates didn’t know where they had to start.
Candidates couldn’t camp out in New Hampshire and get to know everyone there personally. They would have to be ready to dive in and get up to speed on the relevant regional issues, like NASCAR deregulation or whatever it is they care about down South.
I have no illusions that Maine would stand out in a regional primary in which New York and Boston would be likely to get most of the attention. But at least our votes would be counted when the race was still going and the field of candidates had not been winnowed down.
And don’t discount the potential for some really entertaining politics after the primaries. Imagine if Romney won the Northeast, Rick Perry won the South, Ron Paul carried the West and Santorum squeaked out a victory in the Rust Belt. What kind of convention would that be? There would be some debates you could put on pay-per-view.
Downsides? Sure.
For one, it’s never going to happen. Getting the party organizations in 50 states to agree to work together is as crazy as expecting Congress to pass a budget for the year.
And it would break with history, which tells us that the lonely New Hampshire primary gives a little-known and underfinanced candidate like Jon Huntsman Jr. (son of a billionaire also named Jon Huntsman) a chance to find his voice and connect with voters.
As much as we know that it’s not really true, that it still takes money and organization (which also takes money) to win even in New Hampshire, flannel shirts and sweater vests notwithstanding, the New Hampshire mystique is hard to let go.
The National Association of Secretaries of State would keep New Hampshire and Iowa as stand-alone, first-in-the-nation contests out of respect for history, but I’m operating out of jealousy, so my plan would be to mix them into their regions.
So, spite is probably not a good reason to make a major change in the mechanism of self-government, but it’s not a bad idea just because it’s being done for a bad reason.
Let’s make Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary our last.
Greg Kesich is the editorial page editor. He can be contacted at 791-6481 or at:
gkesich@pressherald.com
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