Should the U.S. Abolish the Presidential Primaries and Caucuses?

The Iowa caucus is tomorrow. Radical reform, or abolition, is worth considering.

Not long ago I hosted a dinner for six at my condo in Nashville, where during the last hour I posed a question. 

"In order to preserve our democracy, what is the one reform you believe the country should adopt?"

Answers varied, but somehow, unexpectedly, the sequence of the two replies before mine led me to a surprising proposal.  

“Abolish the Electoral College,” friend John Seigenthaler, a journalist, said.

Another friend, Lydia Howarth, a writer, spoke next, urging that the key change necessary for preserving our democracy is the elevation of leaders of integrity to positions of power. 

“Abolish the presidential primaries,” I offered, in turn.  

I hadn’t intended to assert this, precisely. It was the cleanness of John’s recommendation joined to the rightness of Lydia’s that led me to propose wholesale replacement rather than piecemeal reform.

The best way to elevate leaders of integrity to the White House, it seems clear to me, is for each political party to make certain—as a Kantian categorical imperative—that it does not feed demagogues and authoritarians into the presidential pipeline. 

Of course the people should pick the president, as a friend’s book, Let the People Pick the President, resonantly reminds us. But that does not mean the people must also choose the presidential candidates, at least without some intelligent form of checks & balances incorporated into the process. 

One litmus test delegates used to apply to candidates was that of “fitness for office”—i.e., capacity and willingness to uphold the Constitution, abide by the law, accept the outcome of elections, herald the rule of law, and embrace and publicly applaud the peaceful transfer of power. 

I am not alone in calling for Americans who love stable democracy to shine a self-skeptical spotlight at today’s presidential nominating system. There is a growing body of scholarly literature taking aim at our perilous way of selecting candidates, with hearts and minds set upon implementing changes that will safeguard the republic.

I will be exploring these solutions here in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, if you are curious to learn more, check out the Atlantic’s “Too Much Democracy is Bad for Democracy” and the Brookings Institute’s “Re-inserting Peer Review in the American Presidential Nomination Process.”  

Don’t think for a second that the American presidential nominating system has always been this laissez-faire and menacing to our democracy. For almost two hundred years, state parties and state conventions selected delegates to attend the national conventions, where they debated hard, drew up a platform, and only then voted in rounds for the best candidate to serve the platform, the party, and the nation. 

It goes without saying that one litmus test delegates applied to candidates was that of “fitness for office”—i.e., capacity and willingness to uphold the Constitution, abide by the law, accept the outcome of elections, herald the rule of law, and embrace and publicly applaud the peaceful transfer of power. 

All this formal vetting of candidates vanished in the early 1970s when the Democratic Party led the way to a newfangled candidate-selection model based on state-by-state presidential primaries. The Republican Party soon followed suit. 

It was a radical and unprecedented shift in the structure of American politics. Today we are living out the hellish consequences of it.  

Email me at eli.merritt@vanderbilt.edu or click the comment button below to let me know your thoughts. Alternately, share this essay with a politically-opinionated friend.

The effect of the reform was the demolition of an essential check & balance on the rise of demagogues and authoritarians to the White House: political parties. Yes, once upon a time political parties were fully empowered at nominating conventions to select the candidate who most embodied the values and policy preferences of the party platform and the U.S. Constitution. 

Now, nominating conventions are powerless and meaningless. Delegates cannot vote according to the party platform or by the lights of their own consciences or with a view towards the best interests of the nation. Their hands are tied behind their backs, disabling them from democratically voting down demagogues and authoritarians. 

Sure, democracy is messy, but self-destructively so? Is this what we want for our children and grandchildren? Is this what we want for our liberties and freedoms, the environment, the economy, racial justice, reproductive rights, and international relations—demagogues and authoritarians in the White House?

It all boils down to one question: Do we want to live in a laissez-faire democracy that subjects us to gross quadrennial risks of authoritarian take-over, or do we want to break out of our frightful conformity to the status quo and institute checks & balances into our system of presidential primaries to save us—yes, save us—from the mayhem of constitutional crises that will one day, almost certainly, be contained by autocracy? 

Or, instead of reform, should we abolish the presidential primaries and caucuses altogether, letting the parties democratically elect their own preferred candidates on the basis, before all else, of “fitness for office”?

The answer is not immediately obvious. As we observe tomorrow’s first Republican caucus in Iowa and the New Hampshire primaries a week later, let’s explore what should be done about the presidential primaries, in the years to come, to preserve our democracy. There’s no denying it’s an urgent matter.

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