A Rotten Way to Pick a President

“Something is seriously wrong with the way we pick our presidential candidates. But experts and pundits, caught up in the horse races, have been slow to point out the obvious -- or have come to accept our badly flawed system as immutable fact.” This quote by Washington post writers Sean Wilentz and Julian E. Zelizer in their article “A Rotten Way to Pick a President” adequately sums up the common sentiment regarding the presidential nomination process. In agreement with the majority of Americans today, Wilentz and Zelizer reach the conclusion that the current selection system is flawed after presenting a brief summary of the failures of the status quo. However, unlike the vast majority of people, Wilentz and Zelizer are willing to offer solutions to the problems that they have identified in their article.

Is the fact that Wilentz and Zelizer have offered some practical solutions to the presidential selection process worthy of high honor and praise? Maybe not, especially when one considers the lack of specifics that these two Princeton Professors provide. Take their solution to the problem with the caucuses, for example. In order to fix the problems of non-secret ballots and limited voting times, these two writers offer only a two word solution “abolishing caucuses.” This incredibly limited solution leaves a question burning on everyone’s minds: “does this mean that we should completely abolish all caucuses?” If this is not the authors’ intent, what do they mean by the statement “abolishing caucuses?” Nevertheless, this phrase might not be suggesting any more complicated than making the ballots secret and extending the voting times and days. The solution can’t be that simple, can it? After all it doesn’t take a couple of PhDs from Princeton to arrive at this conclusion, does it? Or, is it the fact that the American voting public has become so complacently acceptant of a broken system that it takes two people with high powered degrees and jobs just to state the obvious?

This lack of specifics isn’t just limited to the proposed solution for the caucuses. It also extends into the primary problems. The problem with some primaries: a citizen can vote for either or both parties. According to Wilentz and Zelizer, this theoretically allows voters from opposite parties to wreak havoc in the voting system. The Princeton professors’ simple solution: “closing open primaries.” Again, why does it take a professor to state the obvious, given the problems with the system? Aren’t the various political party leaders able to come to this conclusion on their own and fix the problem? Or maybe Wilentz and Zelizer are right and these seemingly obvious solutions are not so obvious. Maybe it takes involvement in the election process to really see the problems and be able to offer meaningful solutions. Once this occurs, ordinary American voters just might be able to offer these solutions and it won’t take a PhD to state the obvious.