A de facto national primary: Is this what we want?

With the continuing stampede by the states of Michigan, South Carolina, Florida and whatever jurisdiction is next to fast-forward its own presidential primary dates to early January 2008, the nation risks losing a lot more than the reflective judgment of the voters in the traditional first-in-the-nation states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

The crowding of the primary calendar with more states voting early in the new year turns our presidential nominating process into a de facto national primary that stacks the political deck in favor of the best-known candidates, the ones who lead in the national polls and have the deepest campaign treasuries, and can afford expensive TV time in scattered markets.

As of this writing, Michigan’s legislature has voted to move its primary to Jan. 15 — just ahead of South Carolina Republicans, who had jumped theirs to Jan. 19 after Florida was first to invade the time period the Democratic Party had reserved for the Iowa and New Hampshire contests.

The national Democratic Party has the unexercised power to penalize the date-jumping states by refusing to seat their delegations at next August’s convention in Denver.

It now seems likely that New Hampshire will move its scheduled Jan. 22 primary forward to Jan. 8, which would almost force Iowa to move its caucuses to New Year’s Day or even earlier.

In every presidential campaign from 1980 through 2004, strategist Tad Devine has been a major player, and he sees the crowding of the current primary season this way: “With the calendar still in flux and possibly pushing states back into the Christmas season, the impact on the composition of the electorate and the vote outcome will be serious. ... If the new schedule forces candidates to campaign between Christmas and New Year’s, the dynamic of both the election coverage and its viewership (will be altered) by family commitments around the holidays.”

That could well diminish overall turnout, giving greater voice to single-issue folks in New Hampshire, where, in the 2004 Democratic primary, when there were 228,000 Democrats registered, there were 219,000 votes cast.

Yes, independents can vote in that primary, but few states in November’s general election can match New Hampshire’s primary turnout percentages.

But more important than any unearned advantage a scrambled schedule could confer on front-runners Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) or ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is what the nation will be deprived of politically.

With no small states like Iowa and New Hampshire at the very outset, totally absent from the nominating process will be “retail” politics, which requires presidential candidates to campaign person-to-person and to answer questions from ordinary Americans who are shopkeepers, teachers and homemakers.

There is something profoundly democratic about a would-be president shivering in the frozen pre-dawn hours to shake the hands and ask for the votes of blue-collar workers.

This change will thrill the political handlers, who cannot control the risks of press coverage of their candidates’ unscripted encounters with actual voters.

Dispel all illusions: Once the winnowed field of presidential candidates leaves New Hampshire, voters will see candidates only on TV, landing on airport tarmacs or being interviewed in studios.

To Scott Reed, one of the few living Republicans not facing a congressional subpoena to have managed a presidential campaign and a man who knows the process intimately, the front-loaded 2008 primary schedule effectively means a national primary, which “becomes all about (candidate) name ID and money.”

Democrat Peter Hart, who has expertly polled the nation in every presidential race since 1972, fears that the loss of reflective judgment of Iowa and New Hampshire “will be terrible for 2008, an election we just have to get right.” They are “the only two retail states, and once you lose retail, you lose the vetting of candidates by the voters.”

Without the level playing field of the small states, gone will be the chance of the underfinanced and undercovered underdog to connect with voters and to overcome the favorite’s big media buy through personal effort, energy and chemistry.

Now is the time to ask and to act before we move thoughtlessly to nominating our presidents in a national primary.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE INC. COPYRIGHT 2007 MARK SHIELDS