ABSTRACT
The years since 1968 have seen one of history’s greatest periods of reform in the way Americans organize and populate their political parties and in the way they choose their presidential candidates. In addition, those years have generated a small but thriving cottage industry of political scientists, journalists, and politicians who comment on the reforms, merits and urge retention or repeal of the old reforms and/or addition of new ones. It may come with poor grace from one who, like me, has worked with pleasure and even modest profit in that industry, but I think the time has come to declare a moratorium on further tinkering with the rules of the presidential nominating game for awhile so that we can all get used to the ones we now have and consider carefully whether the mess we have is likely to be better than the different (and probably unanticipated) mess we would create by junking old reforms or adding new ones. But I am unable to resist the temptation to bow out with just one more suggestion for reform.
