The Need for 'Peer Review' in Presidential Nominations

Political scientist Elaine C. Kamarck argues that the need for reform is "urgent"

For the past six years I have been reading, writing, teaching, dialoguing, and generally wracking my brain in an effort to determine “who’s at fault” for the rise of an authoritarian demagogue to the all-powerful Oval Office of the United States.

Is it our fellow citizens who constitute the “MAGA” base? Do-nothing G.O.P. leaders? Right wing media? The titans of economic inequality? An education system lacking basic civics instruction?

Or is it something else?

By and large, it’s something else. The main culprit is the United States’ failed system of checks & balances, notably a presidential electoral system entirely devoid of them.

Here’s the key thing citizens of a democracy must understand: Demagogues and authoritarians corrupt people, corrupt norms, corrupt institutions, and overturn constitutions. That’s why an intelligent democratic system must, as its first priority—better put, as its first, second, and third priorities—keep these corrosive political actors out of high executive office altogether.

Last week I shared an essay (“Should the U.S. Abolish the Presidential Primaries and Caucuses?”) that reminds us that before the reforms of the presidential nominating system in the early 1970s delegates to the quadrennial conventions held it in their power to vet candidates on the basis of “fitness for office,” including candidates’ capacity to uphold the Constitution, abide by the rule of law, accept the outcome of elections, and embrace the peaceful transfer of power. 

Elaine C. Kamarck is a senior fellow in Governance Studies and the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings. She is an expert on American electoral politics and the author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.”...

Today, one reform-minded scholar, Elaine Kamarck, argues that we must restore that power to the nominating conventions, because without it the United States risks opening an easy revolving door to the White House to unfit candidates of the worst caliber imaginable.

Kamarck sees both sides of the issue. “On the one hand, that openness is very appealing because of its small ‘d’ democratic quality,” she says. “On the other hand, it can be quite dangerous—potentially putting the Republic in the hands of someone who is, for reasons of temperament or experience or both, unfit for office.”

An intelligent democratic political system must—as its first, second, and third priorities—keep demagogues and authoritarians out of high executive office.

Kamarck, a political scientist, is an expert in the field of American presidential electoral politics—a system that most political scholars agree is the most Byzantine and bewildering in the world.

She was an early voice pointing to the defects of our nominating system. In April of 2017 she published “Re-inserting Peer Review in the American Presidential Nomination Process” and, two years later, “The Urgent Need for Peer Review in the Presidential Nominating Process.”

“Peer review” is her area of focus because it is an essential metric applied to leadership in so many other fields of professional power:

Peer review is a commonly accepted concept in most professions. In medicine, peer review is defined as, ‘the objective evaluation of the quality of a physician’s or a scientist’s performance by colleagues.’ From lawyers to accountants, to hair stylists, peer review is actually compulsory in the licensure of many professions—but not politics. This is not the case in other democracies where, by and large, the leaders of political parties are chosen in processes that are restricted to party members.

Kamarck further argues that candidates for president must, as an imperative, be vetted on the basis of character and temperament:

And temperament cannot be judged by the public because it is impossible for all but a miniscule number of voters to actually know the candidates and to judge them on the qualities that make for effective democratic leadership. But temperament can be judged by those who are in the same business—in other words, the party leaders and elected officials who used to constitute the old nominating system. We have gone from a system that devalued the opinion of rank-and-file voters to a system that devalues the opinions of other politicians. What we have lost is peer review.

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Email me at eli.merritt@vanderbilt.edu

Further reading: Nick Troiano, “Party Primaries Must Go,” The Atlantic. Troiano is the executive director of Unite America, a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and independents that aims to foster a more representative and functional government by enacting nonpartisan electoral reforms.

Why is the presidential nominating system the most promising locus of reform? For two reasons:

1. It stands the best chance of preventing demagogues and authoritarians from gaining power in the first place and

2. Our two major political parties are private organizations that can change their rules at will.

I will say more about the ways and means of reform in forthcoming essays. In the meantime, keep an eye on both the Republican primary and the “rogue” Democratic primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

Should we keep calm and resist changes to the system on grounds that it’s small ‘d’ democratic—or should we reform it, incorporating checks & balances to thwart the rise of dangerous political actors who will subvert the very democracy that popularly elects them to office?

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