A Political Decathlon
How to quickly whittle down the number of presidential candidates
Unlike 2020, this year’s races for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations were fairly quick and uncomplicated. No double-digit field of presidential wannabes with two tiers of debates and barely-known candidates. But 2028 is likely to return to form so we should start reforming the process now.
The quadrennial dilemma is how to quickly whittle the number of candidates down to one. So far, the thinking has been just let them compete and see what happens. The only current restriction is that debates are limited to the top ten candidates in the polls although it’s anybody’s guess how organizers differentiate between half a dozen candidates polling at one or two per cent when the poll’s margin of error is plus or minus three per cent.
Let’s face it; debates aren’t very good barometers of political success. Everybody says basically the same thing and unless you make a huge goof, nothing’s really decided.
What’s needed is a true political competition that can clearly rank a huge field of candidates from the best to the worst. In other words, we need a candidates’ decathlon, a two-day, winner-take-all competition comprising the following ten events:
