Against Primaries: And in Defense of Smoke Filled Rooms

Progressive politicians have an interesting tick. Often, rather than argue for a policy on its merits, politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders often simply offer some version of the epigram: “America is the only country in the industrial world that does not have (Fill in the blank) policy!” In general, I am unpersuaded by this line of argumentation, which sounds to me no more sophisticated than the old elementary school adage “But all the cool kids are doing it!

There are a few cases, however, where America stands to learn something of value from the rest of the world. This may come as a surprise to most readers, but America is the only country in the industrialized world in which political parties do not have the power to choose their candidates.

Most people have a rough understanding of how the American primary system works. A party's nominee for president is chosen by a vote of the party members, which is determined through primaries and caucuses held in each state. In all but fifteen states, only registered members of a political party can vote on the nominee.

I don’t think we could design a worse system for parties to use to nominate their candidate for president. Every four years, one or both of the major parties in America spends a year and a half (which feels more like three years) publically debating just how radical and broadly unappealing a possible presidential candidate is while retaining even a small chance of success. Unfortunately, primary voters all too often ignore candidates who could expand their party’s coalition, unify the nation, or govern competently—and instead focus on those who yell the loudest, pander the hardest and think the least.

This state of affairs is bad for political parties, which in turn is bad for the nation. It is popular right now for people to complain loudly and sanctimoniously about how “corrupt” and “out of touch” the parties are, but political parties are in fact incredibly important institutions in our republic. 

Unlike activist organizations and interest groups, political parties are focused not on the enactment of one or a few specific policies, but rather on the preservation and perpetuation of the party itself. While this interest can serve to corrupt parties and turn them into principle-void insiders-clubs concerned only with power for its own sake, parties rightly ordered can simultaneously be incredibly powerful forces for political change and social cohesion. While individual candidates rarely think past the next election, political parties are concerned about the next ten elections. Politicians are concerned only about reaching at least 51 percent of the vote; political parties are concerned about piecing together a stable governing majority that can last from one election to the next and, in the best cases, from one generation to the next.

In the aftermath of the cacophonous 1968 Democratic Presidential Primary, a bipartisan and well intentioned effort was made to clean up corruption in America’s major political parties. Unfortunately, like most bipartisan anticorruption reforms tend to, this one misidentified the problem and overreached in implementing a solution. The reformers pried open the doors of the smoke filled rooms, and in doing so, stripped the parties of the power to curate their candidates, turning them into the spavined institutions we recognize today.

It is not too late to repair the damage done by these reforms. Restoring the presidential nominating process is a good place to start. We should move quickly to either reduce the power and importance of primaries and caucuses or eliminate them completely. We should again empower high ranking elected officials on the federal and state level, national and state party leaders, and people of influence in both of the major parties to guide the presidential nominating process by exercising control over a state’s delegates. In doing this, we will give greater control over the levers of party power to the people who are most interested in the long term health and survival of the parties. This will lead to the nomination of candidates for president who stand to expand their party’s coalitions, govern competently and bring our fractured nation together. 

I’ve had enough popular control of the parties. It’s time to bring back the backroom deals in smoke filled rooms.