Kevin Portteus on the History of the Presidential Nomination Process
The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour
Hillsdale College
4.8 • 650 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2024
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Guests: Kevin Portteus, J. Michael Waller, & Haley Strack
Host Scot Bertram talks with Kevin Portteus, professor of politics and director of American Studies at Hillsdale College, about how and why the presidential nomination process was developed. J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, details how DEI initiatives have taken over the CIA and FBI before discussing his new book, “Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains.” And Haley Strack, the William F. Buckley Fellow in Political Journalism at National Review and a 2023 Hillsdale graduate, updates us on the mining and energy beat and recalls her strange experience of visiting an active uranium mine.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, |
| 0:12.0 | the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale |
| 0:18.8 | Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country. |
| 0:24.8 | I find it amusing that anyone would propose moving elections to a single day after the impetus, particularly on the left, has been to stretch out the election process over, over weeks of early voting. |
| 0:39.6 | And, you know, that may have, that may have been a factor in the elections process in 2020. |
| 0:44.7 | This is your host, Scott Bertram. |
| 0:46.8 | Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. |
| 0:52.5 | That was Dr. Kevin Porteus, professor of politics and director of American Studies at |
| 0:57.7 | Hillsdale College. |
| 0:58.9 | We talk with him today about the how and why we nominate our presidential candidates |
| 1:04.1 | in the way that we do. |
| 1:06.0 | Dr. Porteus, thanks for joining us. |
| 1:08.2 | Thank you for having you. |
| 1:09.1 | It's good to have you back. |
| 1:10.1 | Today we talk about the how and the why and the history of the way we get our presidential nominees as that season is coming upon us very quickly. We go way back. The Constitution itself is silent on not the nominating process for candidates. The framers didn't really anticipate |
| 1:28.7 | political parties developing, in fact. So how did this process emerge in the early days of the |
| 1:34.3 | country? Well, as you point out, the founders hadn't really anticipated that there would be |
| 1:39.2 | a parties or a partisan system. And so as parties developed in the 1790s, ultimately what you |
| 1:47.1 | ended up with was a system whereby an organization or a party. And the parties at this time were |
| 1:52.4 | nothing like the parties we have today. They were very Congress-centered. They were not grassroots. |
| 1:58.0 | The members of Congress from the Federalist and Democratic Republican parties would get together in what was called a caucus. |
| 2:04.2 | And they would select presidential candidates, especially the Democratic Republican Party. |
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