Which Party Has Better Primaries?

Which system is better, the ruthless Republican winner-takes-all primary system, or the Democrats’ kindergarten-inspired everyone-gets-a-prize process? New York Times columnists David Brook and Gail Collins banter on just that point. Brooks thinks the Republicans' swift, clean process is superior, while Collins notes that it’s the results that matter. If Obama wins the White House, Democrats will praise the long, endlessly vetting primary.

Brooks, who also thinks Obama will win, hopes that Democrats will realize what they really need is “a series of quasi-caucus, quasi-primary, quasi-frat-pledge-week/telethon-voting contests in which registered, non-registered and amnesiac independent voters gather to sing Dr. Seuss stories to the tunes of Wagnerian opera as a means of electing semi-pledged pseudo-undecided super-delegates." (More Obama 2008 stories.)