James Ceaser: How We Select Presidential Candidates, Then and Now

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2020

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

Is the current system of presidential selection—primary and caucus voting—working well? How did the framers of the Constitution think about presidential selection? How did presidential selection work at other moments in American history? In this Conversation, University of Virginia political scientist James Ceaser shares his perspective on the character of presidential selection from the founding period through the creation of the party system to the nominating process we know today. As Ceaser argues, the founders thought very deeply about presidential selection, and sought to constitutionalize the process of presidential nomination and selection to promote fit characters and filter out demagogues. With varying degrees of success, the party system that grew up later in American history sought to perform a similar function, balancing the input of the populace and party leaders themselves. In recent times, however, the party regulars have lost control of the nominating process and it has opened up dramatically for outsiders. As Ceaser demonstrates, this has had, and may continue to have, dramatic effects on the kinds of candidates that may be nominated—and the character of the American presidency.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today.
0:19.2	Again, I think this might be our fifth conversation actually by my friend Jim Caesar
0:23.7	professor of political science at the University of Virginia down the road in
0:27.3	Charlottesville and author many important studies of American politics American
0:32.4	history the founding, current political events.
0:36.4	So it's great to have you again.
0:39.0	Good to be here.
0:40.0	My view, one of the the best students currently existing of American politics.
0:46.4	And I thought what we would, today is Super Tuesday as it happens, so 14 primaries, including
0:51.0	Virginia is happening today.
0:52.7	And it thought it would be a good time
0:54.5	to have a discussion about a topic you wrote about
0:57.7	in your PhD thesis in a book that was published,
1:00.0	very important book that was published,
1:01.5	I guess over 40 years ago now it's hard to believe
1:04.6	called presidential selection because beneath all the exciting back and forth of these races we are
1:09.7	selecting a president and it's kind of a big deal in our system and it seems to have
1:14.7	changed the way we do it seems to have changed a lot over the years and maybe not
1:18.3	quite be what I just where are we how does it go through how does it fit into the founders intention
1:24.3	and the Constitution and the stages of the change of it I think it's something that's
1:27.5	very neglected you get a lot of analysis every four years about you know
1:31.4	primary calendars change the delegate for
	...

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