Chris is a lot happier about the proposed changes to the 2008 primary season than I am. The plan, which is to put a western caucus and a southern caucus between Iowa and New Hampshire, wouldn't hurt Iowa too much. It would split early ad dollars and so on between four states instead of two, but the primary focus would still be on Iowa.

My concern has nothing to do with Iowa. My concern is that this proposal amplifies
the problems of the 2004 primaries.

In 2004, there were eight days between Iowa and New Hampshire. That's really only seven days of news. Those seven days were split about evenly between "Kerry rocks!" coverage and "Dean is crazy!" scream reruns. Virtually nothing was said about John Edwards, whose second place finish was just as impressive as Kerry's first place.
Kerry's support in New Hampshire skyrocketed basically overnight, and held steady throughout that week. Edwards' support increased somewhat, but he only received 12% of the primary vote, to Kerry's 39%. Do you think those numbers would have been the same, given two or three weeks of coverage? I don't.

Seven days of rah rah coverage later, Kerry claimed five out of seven contests all around the nation. Edwards won the traditionally third South Carolina, but that didn't matter much with six other states holding their races too.

This succession of wins virtually guaranteed Kerry the nomination. All of this happened with absolutely no critical coverage of him. Since he was a come-from-behind candidate, there was precious little critical coverage of him before Iowa, either.
This is not how primaries should be run. We need a chance to take a serious look at any candidate who emerges as a likely nominee.

...

An ideal primary calendar would be backloaded - start out with one contest every couple of weeks, and gradually build to the point of doing 20 or so on the last day (in late April or early May) - a super duper Tuesday, if you will. That schedule would allow a consensus to build if there truly is an informed one, and if not would still decide a winner in time for serious uncontested "primary" fundraising.
The irony of this whole exercise is that those arguing to diminish the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire are in fact (probably) greatly increasing the importance of Iowa. That's too bad, since I don't think that we ought to be solely in charge of picking the candidate. We generally do a pretty good job, but the rest of the nation ought to have a say, too.