From super to superfluous

Three months of presidential primaries remain on the political calendar. The nominating conventions won’t be held for four months. Yet, thanks to one Super Tuesday, all that matters for Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush is the November general election, eight months away.

Whether one backed the winners or the also-rans, there is reason to feel regret that a primary season designed as a marathon to test the mettle and ideas of the candidates has been squeezed down to a sprint that measures little other than fund-raising prowess and party organization. It may well be that Mr. Gore and Gov. Bush still would have prevailed over Bill Bradley and John McCain in a longer, more deliberative setting. But the public, as it prepares to choose the next president, would have benefitted from that setting.

So instead, the period from now until November will have to perform two functions — general-election choosing and primary-season getting acquainted. By locking up the money and endorsements early, by continuing to embrace an archaic closed-primary system, the parties’ movers and shakers got the match-up they wanted.

The problem for both parties, and for the putative candidates, is that the general election is not a closed primary. Independents and those who crossed party lines were viewed with skepticism, if not alarm, by the party regulars in the primaries. In November, they’ll be the key to victory.

This will be particular problem for the Bush campaign. Republicans simply cannot win the White House without the non-Republican interlopers the candidate and party officials derided so mercilessly since New Hampshire. Gov. Bush recovered from that loss by veering sharply to the right. Again, that will win primaries, but it won’t win office.

The Gore campaign has a similar image problem. The vice president can be the guy who’s had seven years of on-the-job training to be president or he can be the drawling, folksy Tennesseean. He can’t be both.

In their Super Tuesday victory speeches, Gov. Bush and Mr. Gore inadvertantly made it clear that the coming election, certain to be the most expensive in history, could also be the most cynical. With their nominations all but secured thanks to negative ads and distortions, the two heaped praise upon the good men they trashed. And here’s the match-up: Gov. Bush will run against Bill Clinton; Mr. Gore against the religious right.

If there is an upside to this shortening of the primary season, it is that no one — candidate, campaign manager or voter — has the stomach for eight months of attack ads. Eventually, the candidates will have to get past the cut-and-paste phrases and boilerplate slogans and talk at length and with substance about such issues as taxes, health care, Social Security — the sort of thing that could have been done in the remaining primaries if front-loaded Super Tuesday hadn’t made them superflous.