Primarily Flawed

Here's an interesting sketch of the recent history of our primary/caucus process from the Washington Post. 

Choice cut:

We were brought to our current mess by the best of intentions. Primaries and caucuses had been around for much of the 20th century, but until 1972, party bosses, not voters, ultimately had the most say in picking the nominees. In 1952, for instance, the Democratic barons selected Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson at the convention instead of the popular Sen. Estes Kefauver, who had won most of that year's primaries -- even beating President Harry S. Truman in New Hampshire. Kefauver, who had made his name by holding dramatic televised hearings into organized crime, was too outspoken to get the nod from a smoke-filled room.

The disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention shattered confidence in this efficient but undemocratic system. Instead of a dove such as Sen. Eugene McCarthy, party leaders from large, non-primary states tapped Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who had cravenly supported President Lyndon B. Johnson on the war in Vietnam and had sent surrogates to run in his place in the primaries. Outside the convention, young demonstrators howled in protest and were beaten by the police. Next time around, reformers led by Sen. George McGovern deliberately weakened the role of the conventions, making primaries the determining force in picking presidential candidates. The Republican Party, feeling some of the same frustration, soon followed suit.

The first people to test this new system were Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. The GOP's reforms gave a stronger voice to the Republican right, letting the upstart Reagan nearly upset President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 by winning the North Carolina and Texas primaries. On the Democratic side, Carter used his surprise victory in that year's Iowa caucuses to transform himself from an unknown peanut farmer and obscure governor ("Jimmy who?") into the front-runner -- without ever courting the party leaders. After Carter's defeat four years later, the Democrats worried that they had produced a process too favorable to weak "outsider" candidates. They then tried to restore some power to the party's operatives by establishing unpledged "superdelegates," including governors, members of Congress and former presidents -- a modest check that did little to gut the reforms.