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"Leapfrogging of Primaries Continues."

"An Ape Types in Iowa."

You see the connection, right? It is obvious. The first article described how South Carolina is going to move its presidential primary election, currently scheduled for Feb. 2, up to Jan. 19. Why? Because Florida has scheduled its election for Jan. 29, and South Carolina wants to maintain its "first-in-the-South" status.

This change might not be a big deal, except that New Hampshire has a state law requiring that its "first-in-the-nation" primary be held at least a week before any other primary. To obey the law, New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner would then schedule the Granite State's primary for Jan. 8.

Enter Iowa. Iowa's state law requires that its caucuses be set at least eight days before any other state's nominating process begins. While the parties, not the secretary of state, set the date for Iowa caucuses, one would expect that they would move their process into December of this year.

Ridiculous. Who could conceive of such a system? Politicians perhaps, but I doubt that it would have been the result were the process left to the bonobos at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, housed in Des Moines. Bonobos are chimpanzee-like apes whom researchers have found to be able to communicate amazingly well -- and to do so by moving figures around on computers.

If symbols for all of the states were put on a computer along with a calendar with Tuesdays from March through June only, I am pretty sure that the bonobos would have come up with a better way of nominating presidential candidates than party leaders have done in their wisdom.

The only problem with this argument is that you think I am kidding -- and I am not. No one -- not the candidates, not the parties, not the states and certainly not the electorate -- benefits from the current system in which, state-by-state, politicians make decisions about their role in the nominating process, thinking only about state pride and state influence (and, in the cases of Iowa and New Hampshire, temporary boons to the state economies). Any political analyst with a national perspective could design a better system. And I am afraid, so could the bonobos, even if the system that resulted from their efforts were purely random. Of course, some New Hampshire politician would not trust the bonobos, because they live in Iowa.

But, to paraphrase a noted military leader also prone to make irrational decisions, we have to live with the primary system we are given.

The result is that we all need to pay attention to the campaigns that are going on, even though no one really wants to focus on the November 2008 election in the dog days of summer 2007. Because of the schedule that is emerging, the first caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are less than five months away. Unless votes among the top contenders are evenly divided, we should know the nominees within six months.

Candidates and television networks recognize this. Two weeks ago, all of the Democrats appeared on CNN, in a debate that featured questions supplied to the network through YouTube. Last week all of the declared Republican candidates shared a stage in Ames, Iowa, and ABC's Sunday morning audience.

I watched all of both debates. Call me a political junkie, but I think we have to sort out the candidates. Time is running out, because of our irrational nominating process. And the debates were not much help.

Some of the questions posed on the CNN/YouTube debate were compelling and important. Some, much less so. The candidates were pushed on health-care policy, but did we really care if they would work for minimum wage? How could serious journalists choose a question like that one from among the 3,000 posed by the public?

George Stephanopoulos' questions to the GOP candidates were better -- and he probed for serious answers. But probe as he might, no serious answers came forth. The current crop of Republican candidates seem to have learned the George W. Bush lesson of how to be elected. Speak in generalities and appear to be a nice guy. Avoid specific issues. You might offend someone.

The choice is ours. We have to push to find out what these candidates would do as president. And, unless the bonobos are suddenly empowered, we don't have much time in which to do it.

L. Sandy Maisel is director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Colby College.

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