Is This Any Way To Pick A President?

The presidential nominating process for 2008 formally begins tonight with the Iowa Caucus, but it already seems like these candidates have been around forever. The hopefuls have all been at this for about a year (except for Fred Thompson, who is probably just waking up from a nap right about now). We'll have to wait almost another whole year to finally find out which one of them will actually become the 44th President of the United States.

This process is way too long. In a society that likes instant coffee and instant popcorn and instant replay, why do we put up with a campaign that lasts half the length of a presidential term? And why do we let two small states -- with populations that are 95% white -- play such a pivotal role in narrowing down our choices?

It's easy to see why it's gotten to this point. Other states try to leapfrog over Iowa and New Hampshire, so those two states keep pushing their caucuses and primaries earlier and earlier. Successful campaigns need to buy a ridiculous amount of TV air time, so candidates need to start raising money early and often. The result is a two year process. The longer the race gets, the more money candidates have to spend. That means the eventual winner is always someone who has raised obscene amounts of money from special interests. So, in the end, the new president is beholden more to the people who financed their campaign than to the people they are supposed to serve.

There has got to be a better way.

Do we really need to have these primaries a few states at a time? I know a lot is made of the "retail politics" in Iowa and New Hampshire. But in this internet age, do we really need to have each candidate personally visit us in our living room in order to make up our minds? If people can find the love of their lives on internet dating sites, surely we can pick a president via YouTube. So, step one isn't to just let one or two other states go early. The answer is to let every state hold their presidential primaries on the same day.

Now, I realize that a national primary would be a mess with seven or eight candidates running for each party's nomination. So, we need a mechanism to narrow down our choices. That's where my second bold idea comes in: Hold the conventions before the primaries. In fact, let the conventions be the starting point for the whole process.

Imagine: In early June during the presidential election year, the parties would come together. To save money, they could hold their events in the same arena on alternating nights. Anyone who wants to be president just shows up. (All they would need to qualify would be a half-million signatures on an internet petition.) One night, everyone who's running gets five minutes to make a speech. The next night, they all debate each other. At this point, no one has to raise a dime and they get the ultimate free media exposure.

The delegates at each convention would be comprised equally of elected officials from every level of government, party activists and citizens chosen at random through a lottery system. Their job -- weed out the second tier candidates. Separate the Kuciniches from the Clintons, the Hunters from the Huckabees. This is where we take a page out of reality TV. At the end of each night of the convention -- the delegates vote one candidate out of the race. The conventions would keep going until only three candidates are left in each party. Imagine the drama -- imagine the ratings. The TV networks would love it. Huge audiences would tune in to see which candidate got sent home. As it stands now, the networks hate covering the conventions. They've all scaled back to about an hour a night. But networks would actually line-up to buy the broadcast rights to a convention like this. And the money from such a sale could finance both parties' campaigns.

After the convention, the three finalists in each party would be given $50 million each from the television revenues to spend on their primary campaigns. Every Republican and every Democrat would go to the polls on the same day in early September.

Now, some people may think that three months isn't enough time to learn all that we need to know about the candidates. But I think Mike Huckabee's recent experience shows why that isn't the case. As soon as he shot to the top of the polls in Iowa a few weeks back, we suddenly learned more about the guy than we ever cared to know. Every skeleton fell out of his closet in about the space of 72 hours. We went from knowing little about him, to knowing every detail of his rapist-paroling, gay-bashing past. Yeah, I'd say three months would be plenty of time.

Following the big national primary to choose the nominees, I'd have the parties steal another trick from the reality shows. The winning candidate would be forced to choose their running mate from one of the two losers. As a bonus, I'd have them make their choice on live TV -- it would put the "rose ceremony" to shame. (If we wanted to make it even more fun, we could then force the running mates to live on the same campaign bus and have cameras document their lives 24-7. Hell, they basically do that anyway.)

With the tickets chosen, it would then be a nice, two-month race to the finish. Each side would be given another $75 million from the government to spend as they wish. Again, two months should be plenty of time. It would be just long enough for people to get interested and not so long that people would get sick of the candidates. Most people make up their minds right away anyway. Best of all, the candidates wouldn't have to raise any money from special interests.

So, there you have it -- my plan for picking a president in six months or less. And hopefully, we wouldn't end up with Richard Hatch in the White House. Or worse -- Taylor Hicks.