If you want to lead the free world, there’s no better down payment than staying in a string of Holiday Inns or sleeping in a supporter’s twin bed. None of the world’s dictators — with their gold-plated toilets and towering portraits — had to do Iowa in January to get their job, and it shows.
The cultural DNA of the primary is also deeply American. Think about the commitment that many single Americans demonstrate to dating multiple people at the same time. If that’s not the definition of a primary, I don’t know what is. It takes time to find love. Sometimes you sleep with the wrong person. It’s OK to wake up with a candidate and realize you see them as more of a Health and Human services Secretary than a presidential partner. But you need the space of a long primary to recover from those mistakes.
Now to your endless debates: They are a buffet of democracy! It could be worse—you could be Czech. Presidential candidates in the Czech Republic debated 37 times in their 2018 election. The professionalism (and repetition) of American debates reveals character flaws and knowledge gaps among the candidates, while exposing vanity and penalizing inauthenticity, in ways debates in many countries around the world do not.
Even so, American debates could be improved. Americans are innovators, but you let Belgium beat you to rotating candidates on- and offstage for minidebates and face-offs on key topics. Catch up! Personally, I’d vote the poor performers off at halftime. That would create ratings and crowds even President Donald Trump would feel no need to exaggerate.
And let me tell you how much I love the rivers of money in American politics. I get a tingle every time I see the quarterly fundraising totals and numbers of donors come in. Granted, dark money is nasty, and few like the idea of billionaires spending themselves into office. But all that money also trains new generations of campaigners and pays them a living wage, letting the good and the hardworking find their place in democratic institutions. In other countries, campaign staff are often on the public docket or are limited to those who can afford to work as volunteers. Without a long primary and the money needed to run it, the campaign would be even more of an upper-class affair.
Money in politics has a bad reputation, but it is a pure expression of political engagement. Millions of Americans put their money where their mouth is each month. And all they get is a crappy bumper sticker or wine cave visit in return. Do you know how many times my family members have donated to a political campaign in Australia? Zero. I’m certain it’s the same with our neighbors. Is it any wonder Australians have been living in a self-inflicted fireball in recent months?
But what about how distracting the primary is? Shouldn’t Democrats be registering people to vote in Wisconsin, and running court challenges in Georgia, and painting Yuma, Arizona, blue? Yes, Democrats, you should be doing that. But if you can’t figure out how to donate $10 to your candidate as well as $10 to Stacey Abrams’ organization, don’t blame the long primary. Blame yourselves.
The long American primary is an inversion of the parliamentary system in many other countries. Instead of assembling a governing coalition before the general election as a U.S. primary allows, those countries spend months constructing the governing majority afterwards. A decade ago, Belgium took more than 500 days to form a new government. A few days eating State Fair fried foods on the campaign trail seems reasonable by comparison.
The hundreds of international TV crews and reporters who traipsed through the snow in Iowa and New Hampshire will now hit the deserts of Nevada. It’s not because they get tingles listening to Elizabeth Warren’s plans. They do it because of the hope that is implicit in so many Americans trying to caucus their way to a brighter future.
The long primary is an exotic luxury, but in the grand sweep of human history, so is democracy. That’s what makes America’s commitment to it beautiful.
Source: politico.com
See more here: news365.stream
