On March 22, the New York Post ran a fine article by Jonah Goldberg that mainly dealt with the Electoral College. Those who are offended by how America elects her presidents would do well to read Goldberg’s concise piece, as it has some good info on how presidents in other nations are elected. But there was something else, perhaps a tad off-topic, that caught my attention (italics added): As Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution has observed, America is the only advanced democracy that has decided to strip its political parties of the power to select their own candidates. Until 1972 -- through conventions, smoke-filled rooms, etc. -- the parties, not the voters, determined who their presidential candidates would be. This function is among the informal checks and balances that make democracy workable around the globe; we scrapped it in favor of ever more open primaries. America now suffers from a political paradox: This is one of the most partisan times in American...(Read Full Article)