How We Got to Hobson's Choice

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Carter vs. Reagan. A President who has presided over a series of foreign policy calamities and a ruinous inflation, challenged by an aging actor who is widely viewed as a simplistic right-wing ideologue. The choice disturbs 58% of the voters polled for TIME by Yankelovich, Skelly & White, who wish there were an acceptable alternative. And it also bothers many foreign observers, including diplomats who will have to deal with the eventual winner.

But is there an acceptable alternative? Less than halfway through the nominating process, Carter and Reagan have built leads that seem insurmountable. This is so despite reforms in the electoral system that were supposed to widen the area of choice by taking nominations out of the hands of party bosses and giving a much larger voice to ordinary voters. It is enough to make many politicians, and ordinary citizens, long for the old smoke-filled room. The current system, says Chicago Lawyer Newton Minow, who was Federal Communications Commission chairman under President Kennedy, is "guaranteed to give us bad choices."

Is it really? To begin with, the Carter-Reagan choice evidently does not seem so dreadful to millions of voters who have judged these two front runners preferable to the opponents that the system provided, in abundance. What does seem true is that the newly reformed system is showing grave flaws, though they are not the ones for which it is most often assailed.

As recently as 1968, only 40% of the convention delegates were elected in primaries; the rest were chosen at caucuses and state conventions dominated by party leaders. This year more than 70% of the delegates will be chosen in 37 separate primaries. And these delegates are legally bound by the primary results, leaving little room for convention maneuvering.

New as it is, this system has already prompted a long list of complaints. Candidates must spend inordinate time and effort organizing and raising money for a drive in three dozen primaries and even more campaigning across the country to get their names known. That necessity works against a responsibly employed but generally unknown office holder who has pressing duties the to fulfill, and in favor of an "unemployed millionaire," in the sarcastic tone of Senator Howard Baker, a loser under the new system. Primary campaigns, it is charged, are largely television campaigns, rewarding the candidate who flashes a winning smile over the one who talks serious issues.

Though all of these criticisms have some validity, they do not explain the dominance of Carter and Reagan. This year's primary voters have been no tiny band of zealots; the turnouts in most states have been unprecedentedly large. On the Republican side, the peculiarities of the primary system permitted several rivals to give Reagan a full and fair challenge: John Connally raised more money initially than Reagan did; George Bush got an early start that paid off in an Iowa victory rocketing him to national prominence; John Anderson won an enthusiastic following by taking provocative stands different from those of all the other G.O.P. candidates. Reagan beat them all mostly be cause his unqualified conservatism and his familiar personality appealed to the votersand not only to Republican enthusiasts but to many independents and Democrats who crossed party lines in the Illinois and Wisconsin G.O.P. primaries. Whatever Reagan's shortcomings, he would have been a formidable candidate under any system, and any system that would allow party bosses to deny him the nomination despite his vote-pulling power would rightly be attacked as undemocratic.

As for Jimmy Carter, he is, after all, the President, and under had old boss-dominated system Presidents generally had such an iron grip on the convention machinery that they used to be renominated automatically. It is only the proliferation of primaries that has made it possible for dissidents to challenge a President seriously in his own party. Carter's rivals have been handicapped less by the system than by their own deficiencies.

All that said, the system does have one all-important flaw: it is heavily stacked in favor of the candidate who wins the early tests. Press and TV trumpet his name, volunteers flock to his banner, money pours in. The losers get little chance to recover from early blunders, one defeat leads to another, and all too soon they are being insistently questioned about how long they can stay in the race. Partly this is the fault of the press's habit of covering primaries as if they were horse races. But it is also a consequence of the pell-mell pace at which primaries follow one another.

Moreover, there is no longer much come for a late challenger. Primary filing deadlines come too early; and there are no big blocs of uncommitted delegates left after the primaries. Polls may show that Gerald Ford would have been a powerful candidate, but having stayed aloof from the primary process, he would have had to depend on a deadlocked convention to win the G.O.P. nomination. As for the Democrats, now that Kennedy has seemingly proved incapable of stopping Carter, it is almost certainly too late for anybody to appeal to the many party members who dislike both.

These defects are not incurable, and remedying them would not require a return to the smoke-filled room. Two frequently mentioned reforms sound promising:

1) Institute regional primaries, probably six in all, spaced evenly between mid-January (when the New England states might vote) and mid- June (the West Coast states). That would prevent the results in one small state that happened to vote early from being blown out of proportion. It would provide some breathing space between primaries for the press and voters to reflect on the qualities of the early winner, and for the losers to reorganize their campaigns.

2) Reserve a bloc of seats at the convention, perhaps a third to a half of the total, for delegates who would be named by the highest ranking party officials in each state and would be required by law to remain uncommitted until the first convention ballot. This uncommitted bloc would revive the possibility that a candidate could enter the race late, win only the last of the regional primaries, and still emerge with the nomination.

This system would not guarantee any change in the results. If it were in effect this year, the winners might still be Carter and Reagan. But at least voters would not feel that the race was over almost before it began.

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