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Jewish World Review March 15, 2005 / 4 Adar II, 5765
Carl P. Leubsdorf
Iowa and New Hampshire: No better place for primaries
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In recent weeks, a bipartisan parade of 2008 presidential hopefuls to Iowa and New Hampshire has begun. There's only one problem: It's not certain the two states will open the presidential nominating process again three years hence.
While the Republican rules for 2008 are pretty much cast in concrete, the Democrats have created yet another commission to study the primary calendar and propose possible changes. It holds its first meeting on Saturday.
As one of the few reporters who has covered every such panel back to the 1960s, here's some advice: Let well enough alone.
The reason: Iowa and New Hampshire are good places to begin, especially compared to the alternatives. Besides, every change in the last 35 years has complicated matters.
Former Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe agreed to name the panel last year to appease Democrats in Michigan and other states who sought to challenge the Iowa-New Hampshire primacy.
Some Democrats felt they were at a political disadvantage in 2000, when Republicans held primaries in February in states where the Democrats didn't allow them. But the fall results didn't validate their concerns.
Still, ever since the 1969 McGovern rules created the modern nominating system, critics have questioned the influence of the two small, predominantly white and rural states.
That criticism was exacerbated by the fact that, in the last two Democratic races, victories by Al Gore and John Kerry in both Iowa and New Hampshire had the practical effect of deciding the nomination before any other state voted.
But that wasn't unusual, since every modern candidate who won both states has won his party's nomination. Split outcomes, by contrast, produced far different scenarios, for the Democrats in 1988 and 1992 and the Republicans in 1996 and 2000.
Here are several reasons the nation is well served by keeping Iowa and New Hampshire at the front of the pack:
There's another reason it may make little sense for the Democrats to fiddle with the schedule. By all current signs, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be a strong favorite to win the nomination if she runs, whatever the calendar.
And front-runners almost always win party nominations. Howard Dean's collapse in 2004 marked the first time since 1972 that the clear leader failed to do so.
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