ABSTRACT
The democratized presidential selection process requires presidential candidates to establish a relationship with the electorate rather than simply a relationship with party leaders and office holders. At the risk of stating the obvious, those who prevail in the process are those who are able to get the most votes. The democratic hope is that citizens will use this power to nominate and elect candidates who are qualified for the office and whose policy positions appeal to their sense of the nation’s interests. The Founders’ fear was that the attitudes and, therefore, the votes of citizens would be manipulated by candidates who appealed to their passions rather than to their reason and to their narrow, often selfish interests, rather than to the public interest. The performance of the now fully democratized process for winning nomination and election to the presidency, abetted by a fully democratized media environment, suggests that the fears of the Founders were more prescient than the hopes of the democrats.
