What You'll Never See if You Live in Utah: A Presidential Candidate

What will you never see if you’re a voter in Utah?

You’ll never meet the candidates for President, unless you count emails asking for money or phone calls.

If you live in New Hampshire, though, or Iowa, or maybe even South Carolina, you might learn something like this:

You learn that Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) is awful at small talk. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a ham, breaking into funny voices and goofy faces. And former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is . . . not like that at all. “Like talking to your doctor,” one voter remembered.

And, as it turns out, former Utah governorJon Huntsman Jr. is surprisingly calm after he’s been bitten by a goat.

That’s right. People in New Hampshire actually shake hands and talk with the candidates, not just about them. Even then, they have a hard time making up their minds.

But, during this chaotic primary system, even some of these people — the Platonic ideal of the American voter, close enough to look each candidate in the eye — are still struggling to make a choice.

And so, one night this week, Andy and Betsie Bridge decided they couldn’t make up their minds until they had gone to see former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) in the flesh.

For the third time.

Gag.

Someone, please: reboot the system, and soon. I’m all about Iowa and New Hampshire voters getting their say in the choice of the next president, but I’m also all about Mississippi getting their say, too, as well as North Dakota, Oregon, New Mexico, and, yes, Utah. With its primary scheduled for late June (and prohibited from being held earlier than March by the Republican National Committee) the decision will be all but a foregone conclusion, and Republican voters will go to the polls on that warm Tuesday in early summer to show their solidarity with whoever is left standing, not to make a choice for who should lead the free world.

Enough already. Who died and made Iowa and New Hampshire king and queen of the primary process? We don’t need Iowa to tell us how to vote.

It’s time to change the system. Allow states to hold their primary when they want, or at least rotate which states vote first. Perhaps set up regional primaries, rotating the first primary votes between regional blocks of states. Anything but this archaic and unfair (to us, not the candidates) system of watching Iowa and New Hampshire kick off the presidential election, select the nominee, and cut candidates who will never get their name on the ballot in states that would surely support them otherwise.

It’s good for the country. Rather than allowing the candidates to pour into early states Iowa and New Hampshire, they would be forced to mount nationwide (or at least region-wide) campaigns. Candidates with broad popular support (like Tea Party candidate Michelle Bachmann, who just dropped out or libertarian-Republican Ron Paul, who garnered third place in Iowa) and candidates with strong organizational skills and networks (such as Mitt Romney) would be well equipped. Others, with more broad support in specific regions (such as, perhaps, Jon Huntsman in the west or Rick Perry in the south), will succeed in their regions, giving them a fighting chance to make their case for longer than a few debates and a couple of primaries. And idiot flabber blabbers (like Newt Gingrich) can rely on attacking the media where ever the media is found.

Everyone would get a say in the vote, not just the 120,000 people who show up to vote in Iowa.

Don’t think it matters? I’d bet good money that we wouldn’t have seen an Obama v. McCain match up in 2008. And that could have meant a different course for history, not to mention for the economy.