The "dog's breakfast" methodology for selecting our presidential candidates (particularly bad this year with the front-loaded primaries), along with the enormous and ever-increasing power granted to the winner, is a bad combination. Aside from incumbents, most candidates in recent years seem to have almost fallen by sheer luck into the winning slot.

I don't know what "public" means when you're talking about running primaries, or anything else. "Public" is usually a euphemism for the government doing it, and then we're pretty much back to square one as far as conflict of interest goes.

We were probably better off with the smoke-filled rooms.