DURST: Smoke-filled Rooms

In olden timey days, back around the turn of the century, a party's nominee for President was picked by a bunch of rich white guys wielding cigars and serious stipulations. Hence the term: smoke filled rooms.Then the public rebelled and demanded a system where they would have a voice in who became their chief executive. Which led to the state by state primary system. Through some bizarre quirk of fate known only to Eisenhower's astrologist's dog, New Hampshire became the traditional starting line. And candidates who did well there were able to gain some momentum which led to money rolling in so they could run a nationwide candidacy, usually ending in a showdown in California in June.Then a bunch of states weren't satisfied just being part of the process, they wanted to be a big part of the process and got together and created a Super Tuesday so candidates couldn't ignore their regional clout. Then every state started whining they wanted the same kind of political juice and start leapfrogging each other placing their primary closer to the front until it got to where in the year 2000 a third of the states including the biggest five will have cast their votes by the Ides of March.This means even if a candidate does well in New Hampshire, he can't expect money to roll in because there won't physically be time to do anything with it. So all the money needs to be gathered upfront. And is solicited by the candidates from rich white guys still wielding stipulations but no longer cigars. So we've gone back to the same exact way of electing a President. The only thing we've managed to do in 100 years is eliminate the smoke.Thanks to the smokeless filled rooms Will Durst thinks the new candidates probably smell better.