My letter to the most important man in American politics

Think what this accelerated caucus schedule would do to diminish the New Hampshire primary, which in recent years has been eight days after Iowa. The candidates will live nearly full-time in Iowa from the week before Christmas until the caucuses. They will watch the ball come down on New Year's Eve in Dubuque (Iowa) not Derry (New Hampshire). If the caucuses are Jan. 5, the candidates will arrive in New Hampshire just in time to spend Sunday morning, Jan. 6, making the rounds of the TV talk shows. They will then embark on a whirlwind 36-hour tour of the state, which would be a parody of New Hampshire-style personal campaigning. After 88 years of tradition, New Hampshire would become a drive-by state.

Thursday, Jan. 3, for Iowa would give New Hampshire only slightly more breathing room. Democratic media consultant Anita Dunn, who braved the Iowa-New Hampshire gantlet with the ill-fated 2000 Bill Bradley campaign, predicts that Jan. 4 would be dedicated to absorbing the results of the caucuses. Then Saturday, Jan. 5, would be dominated by the first post-Iowa snap polls. A network or two would probably sponsor debates in both parties on Sunday, Jan. 6. Then would come the candidates' 36-hour no-questions-please-we're-in-a-hurry dash to the primary. As Dunn put it, "By the time the Iowa analysis is over, New Hampshire will have happened."

While we are in uncharted territory with the tightly sandwiched 2008 campaign schedule, the simple rule of thumb is that the Iowa caucus results tend to dissipate after five or six days. The internal tracking polls for Bradley in 2000 and Howard Dean in 2004 -- two candidates who endured epic pratfalls in Iowa -- charted a rebound as the New Hampshire primary neared. In short, the smaller the window between Iowa and New Hampshire -- especially if it is just three days -- the greater the likelihood that New Hampshire would simply ratify the results of the caucuses.

This schedule would also reward Michigan for breaking the rules of both parties by moving at the last minute to mid-January. (The logic for making major industrial states wait to hold their primaries until later in the cycle is to give underdogs a chance to break through with low-cost campaigning in Iowa or New Hampshire.) After spending as little time as possible in New Hampshire, the surviving GOP candidates would lavish a full week in Michigan, tromping through Traverse City and bowling in Benton Harbor. Meanwhile, the Democrats (who have pledged to boycott Michigan) would give the South Carolina primary and the Nevada caucuses (both of which may be held on Saturday, Jan. 19) the full attention that New Hampshire once took as its birthright.

There is an obvious solution to save the New Hampshire primary, though it would take a little maneuvering on your part, Mr. Gardner. Hold the New Hampshire primary on Saturday, Jan. 12. That would restore the traditional week-or-so separation between Iowa and New Hampshire. The Democratic candidates would spend that entire week in New Hampshire, while the Republicans would be skittish about campaigning in Michigan before Jan. 13 for fear of fatally antagonizing Granite State voters.

Yes, I know that the New Hampshire law says that the primary has to be at least "7 days" before "a similar election." But it is the secretary of state who interprets what the phrase a "similar election" means. Many in New Hampshire, including state Democratic chairman Ray Buckley, have argued that the Michigan primary is not a similar event, since all the leading Democrats, aside from Hillary Clinton, have formally removed their names from the ballot. In your comments this week to the Manchester Union Leader, Mr. Gardner, you indicated that you would not accept this easy exit route from your current scheduling dilemma.

In an age where it seems like everyone is cutting corners, it is both praiseworthy and a tad foolhardy that the secretary of state of New Hampshire would not take advantage of such a legal loophole to uphold the primary.

So why not do things directly? Ask the governor and the legislative leaders to convene a special session to eliminate the "7-day" requirement from the primary law. As influential Democratic state Sen. Lou D'Allesandro said, "That's not a major problem. If Bill Gardner asked for it, yes, it could happen." Since New Hampshire is such a small state, I am told that it would not take more than a week to make the arrangement for a special session of the legislature.

Outsiders may think it is weird that a national reporter would devote so much energy to trying to urge you to move the New Hampshire primary just four days from the likely Jan. 8 to the infinitely preferable Jan. 12. But in the hyper-drive video-game world of the 2008 primary calendar, 96 more hours is a political lifetime. Time enough to uphold the relevance of New Hampshire's proud political traditions. For to update Daniel Webster, "It is a small primary, and yet there are those who love it."

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