by Paul West

'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first - verdict afterwards.'

'Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. 'The idea of having the sentence first!'

When it comes to nonsense, Lewis Carroll’s got nothing on the folks who are bringing you the ‘08 campaign.

How about staging a nomination campaign before you know when the elections will be? The candidates have no choice.

Consider: With wide-open races in both parties, the Republican and Democratic contenders have spent the past several years traveling the country, raising and spending tens of millions of dollars in pursuit of the presidency. They’ve aired thousands of TV ads already, put hundreds of advisers and field workers on the payroll and participated in countless debates, forums, TV interviews, webcasts and grassroots events.

And yet, none of the candidates, at this very late date, knows when the first vote will be cast. That’s a rather significant problem, one that greatly complicates their efforts to devise a winning strategy.

Is the first primary two and a half months away? Or will it be in a matter of a few weeks? Will the big states of Michigan and Florida stage showdowns in January? Or, if they are only symbolic "beauty contests," will they matter?

How about little Iowa and New Hampshire, whose symbiotic relationship has outsized influence on the final outcome? Remember Howard Dean’s scream last time? The one-time frontrunner howled in Iowa and was effectively finished, eight days later, when he failed to take New Hampshire. This time, those two states are likely to be closer together than ever before, with unpredictable consequences.

Here’s what everyone does know: The presidential candidates are barreling toward the most concentrated period of primaries and caucuses ever held. In all likelihood, by Valentine’s Day, if not sooner, it will effectively be over, and the longest general election campaign in history will have begun.

But exactly when the earliest primary contests will start, and where, remains up in the air.
New Hampshire’s election chief, who has sole power to set the date for what has traditionally been the nation’s kickoff primary, has openly speculated about holding that vote in early December. He also has indicated that he might not reveal his decision until early November.

Many politicians think he’s bluffing, but they can’t be sure. The betting is New Hampshire will go on Tuesday, Jan. 8, with Iowa’s caucuses held five days earlier. In fact, Iowa Republicans have voted to do just that. Iowa Democrats, however, are threatening to hold their caucuses on Saturday, Jan. 5, the same day that Wyoming Republicans have said they will choose their delegates at a convention, one of the things that has sparked talk that the ’08 voting could start in ‘07.

Why should you care? What could be more boring than endless squabbling about the contours of the primary election calendar? Isn’t this the ultimate insider nonsense, the sort of stuff that turns people off of politics? Well, yes, but….

States from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes to the Rockies are playing leapfrog, trying to one-up the other and gain a measure of extra attention from the candidates, and perhaps play a big role in choosing the next president. Unless you live in one of those places, you’ve probably ignored the whole thing, with good reason.

In fact, few aspects of the campaign may matter more, in the final analysis, to the selection of the next president.

Exactly when and where the early contests will take place "is the most important strategic component of the nomination," according to Tad Devine, who ought to know. The Democratic strategist is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the nominating process, having played key roles in virtually all of his party’s major presidential campaigns since 1980.

Devine, who isn’t involved in this year’s contest, believes the Christmas holiday period is going to be more central to the endgame in ’08 than ever before, and "that is going to have an impact. I can’t say exactly what the impact will be because nobody ever lived through this before."

In 1984, when the primaries stretched out over a much longer period, Devine helped direct the delegate selection operation for Walter Mondale’s winning nomination campaign. But if the current calendar and rules were in effect back then, "Mondale would not have survived," he says. Gary Hart would have been the Democratic nominee.

In 2000, John McCain skipped Iowa and concentrated, instead, on New Hampshire. He upset George W. Bush there with the help of independents, the state’s largest single group of voters, who decide on election day whether to vote in the Republican or Democratic primary.

If Hillary Clinton wins decisively in Iowa, dashing the hopes of many New Hampshire independents who were thinking about supporting Barack Obama, "the only show in town will be the Republican primary," which would help Rudy Giuliani, according to Devine. Conversely, if Obama does well in Iowa and inspires New Hampshire independents, Giuliani would suffer.
Back-to-back victories by Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire would all but sew up the nomination, predicts Devine, in a view shared by others.

"It’ll go like a hot knife through butter," he says.

Similarly, if Mitt Romney, who has the edge in state polling in Iowa and New Hampshire, wins both states, something no Republican has ever done, he’ll likely be on his way to becoming his party’s nominee, according to Devine.

Giuliani, the current Republican front-runner in national polls, may be counting on winning later big-state primaries in delegate-rich states like Florida, California, New York and New Jersey, a strategy that is reflected in the way he’s been spending his time and money.

"It’s a preposterous strategy," Devine says, "a strategy of necessity." Al Gore tried that in 1988, abandoning New Hampshire, where he was making no headway, and putting everything on the line in the South. It didn’t work.

And what about the prospects for change, and a more rational system, four years from now, when a president who endured the current nonsense is seeking re-election?

If an establishment Democrat, like Clinton, wins, "you’ll get a nomination process that is much more settled," predicts Devine. But if the result is continued partisan division in Washington, with a Republican president and a Democratic Congress, then, in all likelihood, "nothing will happen."

Paul West is the Baltimore Sun's bureau chief in Washington. He joined the paper as national political correspondent and has covered every presidential campaign since the 1980s. Before coming to Washington, he was a reporter in Texas and Georgia, where he covered education, the federal courts and local and state government and politics.