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Remember 1984The year of the lengthy primary season we now long for.

By Jeff GreenfieldPosted Friday, Sept. 7, 2007, at 12:08 PM ET

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On June 5, six states voted. Hart seemed poised to stage yet anther comeback, with poll leads in California and New Jersey. Then, in an act of self-destruction trumped only by his sleepover with Donna Rice three years later, Hart apparently forgot all about the sensibilities of New Jersey voters. He said of his wife, Lee, at a fund-raiser in California in Los Angeles, "The good news for her is that she campaigns in California, while I campaign in New Jersey. " When Mrs. Hart interjected, "I got to hold a koala bear," Hart said, "I won't tell you what I got to hold: samples from a toxic waste site." On primary day, Hart went on to scratch out a win in California, but the aggrieved citizens of New Jersey gave Mondale a 15-point win. And finally, the race was effectively over. All told, Mondale won 6.8 million votes to Hart's 6.5 million (Jesse Jackson placed third with 3.3 million votes).

In sum, in 1984, we got what we say we want today. Iowa and New Hampshire gave a long shot a chance to be seen and heard. The South then played an early pivotal role. The big industrial states got their chance to be highly consequential. And voters around the country had months to learn more and more about the candidates.

And yet the punditocracy loudly condemned the system. "If 1984 teaches no other lesson," wrote the Washington Post's Haynes Johnson, "it ought to be that the primary process must be shortened further." An unsigned item in the Post complained that "the Democratic process seems to have gone on as long as the Korean War on 'M*A*S*H*.' " Political scientist Austin Ranney concluded that "so many primaries so strung out are not great for the Democratic Party. Before 1968, the party leaders would have enough time to arrive at a consensus fairly early, which gave the party time to salve its wounds and get into contention to beat the Republicans in November."

Four years later, in 1988, there was no extended contest. George Bush and Michael Dukakis won early and big. These lopsided outcomes convinced the larger states that they were being shut out. By 1992, California had joined New York in moving its primary to March, and the rush to the front of the calendar was on. For Democrats especially, the results of the last two nominations, in which Al Gore and John Kerry won without ceding a single significant primary to their rivals, underscored the idea that states had to move to the front of the line to be relevant.

To me, a return to the 1984 calendar makes a lot more sense than some of the alternatives. The free-for-all dash to the head of the line is already proving to be a recipe for chaos. A national primary would give far too much advantage to the better-known, better-financed candidates. And the complaint that a lengthy process leaves the victor too battered to compete in the general election simply ignores history. FDR and Eisenhower had to endure pitched battles at the convention and somehow managed landslides. Gerald Ford, who almost lost his renomination to Ronald Reagan in 1976, staged a near-successful comeback against consensus nominee Jimmy Carter. It's not apparent what political advantage Gore and Kerry gained from their glides to the nomination.

By contrast, the 1984 calendar seems to address most of the complaints we're now hearing. It does, however, need one adjustment. Yes, small states should be at the head of the line. But at some point, the good people of Iowa and New Hampshire have to be told—kindly but firmly—that neither the Bible nor the Constitution requires that they always be the ones to go first.

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Jeff Greenfield is the senior political correspondent for CBS News.

Photograph of Jesse Jackson and Walter Mondale by Jim Mone/Associated Press.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

What if the primary schedule was based upon the margin of victory (or defeat) for each state from the previous election?

What I am proposing is that the more "purple" a state is, the closer to the front of the schedule the state belongs.

The idea being that states with narrow margins of victory have more potential swing voters than other states. And you want a candidate that will appeal to the most swing voters after the primary is over, for the die hard voters will most likely always vote for their candidate.

So imagine a primary schedule where Ohio, New Mexico, Florida, etc. are the first states with a primary. Now we have a whole different type of process which benefits the candidates who can appeal to the center, not the power brokers in Iowa, NH, and South Carolina.

And the greatest thing about the system is that the front runners will constantly be changing based upon the previous election. Now there is a real benefit for the local party organization in a very red or blue state to try to make the election closer so they can move up in the schedule.

Only downside is that NH and Iowa would probably be upset.

--locker1776

(To reply, click here.)

Fiddling with the order of the primaries is about money: it's about forcing the tee vee stations and the candidates to spend money in your state instead of some other state. Iowa at least forces a kind of labor-intensive campaign on the candidates, and New Hampshire wants to see their faces, but in the big states no matter when they have the vote it's all going to be about money.

The whole idea about having early primaries that would expose the faces and the speeches and give money a chance to be spent wisely on politicians who were performing in public is lost when you turn the primaries into a giant bum's rush. What you get instead is a REAL primary that happens in the months before the official season, when the skybox crowd gets its own early game and makes its own decisions. At least that was the way things were supposed to be, in the old New World with which Slate's Experts would be happiest: before Dean and the internet: before things started going wrong.

The argument now between Clinton and Obama both is and is not a repeat of the Mondale-Hart contest. Hart was supposed to be new and wasn't, and was supposed to have new ideas, but didn't. Hart had, after all, managed the McGovern campaign (and did a remarkably bad job at it). He'd had his moment of cathexis with Warren Beatty (a movie star and a political wonk meet and decide they want to be each other and, for a little while, are). So why were Hart's flaws such a surprise?

It's tempting for the Clinton people to try making the case that Obama is another Gary Hart, but his narrative arc is totally different: it's actually a lot like hers, if you pretend (as she seems, much of the time to do) that you can put all her time as The Wife in brackets. So who's the Hart, here? The DLC longs for a new Hart: he was the candidate of their golden youth. If they could only get Paul to run as a Democrat...

And of course, there's also no Reagan waiting in the wings. The republicans can't decide between Grumpy, Sneezy and Dopy. And is there a Mondale here? At the beginning and end of that 1984 season, Mondale was the best, and then he got beaten by a clown.

--Melvyl

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