Shame on Florida

New Hampshire is known around the world for this one thing, its crucial role in the Primary. The reason the Primary works so well here is all to do with the size of the cities and the political commitment of the people. In the same way that big international arts festivals only truly work in compact cities such as Adelaide and Edinburgh, a hands-on political exercise can only truly work when the cities are not vast and the populations overwhelming. In the latter context, political appearances turn into impersonal rallies. They lose their intimacy and the opportunity for voters to ask the hard questions and meet the candidates in person. This has always been the magic of the New Hampshire Primary. The close scrutiny and the earnest way in which the New Hampshire people embrace it has given this Primary not only its legitimacy but a gravitas. These people have been a national political barometer - only because they truly measure the air. One needs to be here to see how very properly it plays out.

However, the USA is a fiercly competitive country and, as I have written before, the other states have become fiercly jealous of NH's role in national politics. This little northern state. How dare it be important!

So the fight to unseat NH has become nasty.

Florida has just tossed a savage spike into the wheels of the Primary, announcing that it will go to the vote on the last Tuesday in January - instead of March, or even February, which it had suggested was its early target.

One is not surprised to learn that a Republican Governor is behind all this. Governor Charlie Crist has said that he wanted Florida "near the front of the line in determining the next leader of the free world".

Hell, Florida has never needed a Primary to do this. Methinks it is a "by hell or highwater" business for the fourth-most-populous state to throw political weight around.

Who can forget the year 2000?

Florida was key in the 2000 election - with all its recounts and dramas of disenfranchised black voters, missing ballots, duplicated postal votes, malfunctioning machines... It was a disgraceful performance in which we all learned that weird word "chad".
It made Florida internationally famous for its political ineptitude and, perchance, corruption. That shameful 2000 election became known as "Floridagate".

And this is Florida's qualification for trying to destabilise the country's traditonal Presidential Primary process?
Shame upon you, Florida.


Image: Mike Collins' famous 2000 cartoon from taterbrains.com