Presidential politics overload

In an editorial today, the Press calls on proponents of moving up New Jersey's presidential primary to February to find already allocated state money to pay county election boards the $8 million the extra voting will cost. (http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070301/OPINION/703010416/1029). They want to give New Jersey voters a better chance at making a difference in determining the candidates for the White House. That hasn't been the case for years, with the state holding its presidential primary in June.

But as Ingrid Reed of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers noted, that assumes the frontrunner will be clear long before June. The state's politicians are using the past to shape a future decision, she said. Who's to say that the party faithful of either major party will sort out their favorite from among the large crop of candidates who have already declared? Maybe New Jersey would be better off holding its last-in-the-nation primary after all.

All these candidate announcements almost a year before the first primaries or caucuses and 20 months before Election Day lead to another suggestion: shorter campaigns. This lifelong political junkie is already turned off by all the rhetoric. The eight weeks from Labor Day to Election Day 2008 seems about right.