I watched CNN last night, waiting for results from the Iowa caucuses. And, like everyone, I was disappointed in the delay. But I was also irritated at the constant carping by the CNN newsmen, carping as though this were a personal insult by the State of Iowa suffered by CNN and other media. Note to news media -- the Iowa caucuses weren't all about you, nor were they a show offered for the benefit of you and your viewers.
My introduction to the American presidential nominating process came when I was twelve years old. My family was spending a week in a beat-up motel at the ocean. No TV. My dad and I sat in our car, for hours on end, listening on the car radio to the Republican convention that nominated Eisenhower over Robert Taft. I was enthralled. Why had no one told me about all this before? It helped that, months earlier, I had chosen Ike as my candidate, with about the same degree of analysis and thought as I chose the Brooklyn Dodgers as "my" team in the World Series.
The subsequent Democratic Convention was, in some ways, even more interesting, as I listened to it sprawled on the floor in front of my family's Magnavox radio/phonograph console. While Eisenhower had won on the first ballot, after delegates pledged to Harold Stassen were released and swung to Ike, it took the Democrats three ballots to choose Adlai Stevenson.
Four years later, I was all geared up for both conventions, and our family finally had a television set on which to watch them. But Eisenhower was assured of a second nomination, and Adlai was easily nominated once again. (There was an unusual open vice presidential contest, which a young senator from Massachusetts almost won, but that contest was sort of an after-thought.)
Four more years, and I was a college student, watching the conventions at home during summer vacation. Kennedy won the Democratic nomination, but the battle was hard-fought. And the 1960 convention was the first where I observed the phenomenon that I also observed last night -- an assumption of entitlement by the broadcast media.
So far as I know and recall, the conventions in 1952 and 1956 were similar to conventions as they had been for many past years. They were covered by the media, with intent interest from the public, but the media were there to observe and report on proceedings -- not to influence them. Those proceedings included not only passage of the platform and voting on the candidates, but a large amount of American hoopla designed to whip up a frenzy of enthusiasm among the delegates, give them the opportunity to meet and greet each other and form political friendships and work off frustrations, and in general to reward them for their devotion to the party. This "hoopla" was best exemplified by the wild celebrations on the convention floor in support of various candidates -- bands marching around, people dancing in the aisles, huge posters being thrust aloft, balloons being released.
It all took time, but who cared and who was keeping track?
Television, as it turned out. I remember clearly CBS's news anchor Walter Cronkite -- who I loved and who most of America seemed to love -- bristling with frustration at the amount of time that was being "wasted" by all this activity on the floor, and by the inability of his reporters to find the people they wanted to interview in the midst of all the noise and congestion. This just won't do, he said repeatedly. The American public won't stand for this foolishness.
What he meant was that he wouldn't stand for it, nor would his network and its advertisers. They wanted a fast, easily watchable, and rationally orderly process, one on which he could smile benignly and have a good idea of what was about to happen next.
By 1964, he was getting his way, as the conventions were put under tighter and tighter control, keeping in mind at all times the convenience of the television cameras. Strangely enough, as things became more and more regulated, the public became less and less interested, and the networks offered increasingly truncated coverage. (The increasing adoption of state primaries, resulting in fully pledged delegations, also took much of the drama and suspense away from the ultimate conventions.)
I no longer spent every waking hour in front of the tube, studying every minute detail of how the rules operated, and how parliamentary procedure guided the proceedings. (The fact that I was no longer twelve years old may also have had some impact, admittedly.) Until today, sometimes I watch only the acceptance speech by the ultimate nominee.
But, even admitting a number of causes, network television essentially eliminated the nominating conventions as a mass gathering of the party faithful, the chief, but not sole, purpose of which was to choose a nominee.
Ironically, the years in which I had the most intense interest in nominating conventions was the very decade or so in which their importance in our nation's political life was fading and dying.
The broadcasts from Iowa last night showed this same tendency by the media to act as though their convenience, and the convenience of the television audience, should determine how Iowa party leaders should run their show. Many were attacking the caucus system itself, for being awkward, chaotic, inefficient, and especially "undemocratic." Undemocratic because only a small percentage of the general public attended the caucuses.
I participated in caucuses through 2008, after which Washington Democrats submitted to a presidential primary. The caucuses were an excellent form of direct democracy, where neighbors gathered, discussed issues, and voted for candidates. I saw no sign that attendees were "frightened" about voting in public in front of friends and neighbors, as claimed last night. We're a weird democracy if speaking out in public or even showing one's opinion is a frightening experience.
But the "undemocratic" claim should be saved for some future blog post. I simply submit now that a party's procedure in selecting a candidate is not a general election. If a party means anything, it is an organization that puts forth candidates and proposals that further its own ideals and goals. When not only members with little interest in politics, but members of the general public who don't even consider themselves members or supporters of the party, have a major role in selecting a party's candidates, then the party system appears somewhat irrational.
If that sort of "democracy" appears desirable, then we should adopt for presidential races the same procedure that Washington and a few other states have adopted for non-presidential races -- non-partisan primaries. If a state has twelve electoral votes (like my state), the 24 candidates running for electors receiving the highest number of popular votes would run against each other in November, regardless of party membership. Or scrap the electoral college, and hold a national primary with the top two candidates, irrespective of party membership or non-membership, opposing each other in a general election.
Yeah, like any of that's ever going to happen.
But if we continue with our present system, allowing the parties in each state to determine how their candidates are selected, the news media should stand aside, watch the proceedings with interest, perhaps editorialize after the fact, but not inject themselves into the primaries or caucuses or conventions in real time, where their enormous influence may have an impact on the ultimate outcome.
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