Next year’s presidential campaign promises to be fantastic for political junkies. With open nominations for both parties and close to 20 candidates running, there is always something for pundits to focus on, maybe even enough for the maw of media demand in this age of Internet and 24-hour news coverage.

There is enough so that every day, one of the candidates is doing something that we can all mull over and debate. What good, gooey political fun!

Candidates have spent the past year hanging out in Iowa living rooms and New Hampshire diners. But there is a new element this cycle — what once was Super Tuesday has morphed into Super-Duper Tuesday, with a possibility of as many as 20 states holding primaries on Feb. 5, just two weeks past the scheduled New Hampshire vote.

The old pattern of candidates camping out in Iowa hoping to emulate Jimmy Carter’s surprising 1976 victory and then trooping over to New Hampshire to woo the Granite State voters will still go on, but everyone will have one eye on the real pot of votes coming up soon thereafter.

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No one knows how all the front-loaded primaries on Tsunami Tuesday of Feb. 5 will affect the whole process. And the questions make punditry even more fun this year. Will the force of what could grow to 20 states, including such vote-heavy states as California, Florida, New Jersey and Michigan, negate the impact of Iowa and New Hampshire?

Or will the tremendous expense of having to campaign in so many dispersed states mean that the media bounce coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire will actually give those states even more importance? The coverage of those results will be occurring just as early voting is going on in the Feb. 5 states.

Scintillating as this all might be for political aficionados, is it really any way to run an election? Without much planning, we’ve ended up with this system that favors candidates with lots of money or big-name recognition.

With this new calendar, there will not be time to pause and reflect on which candidates did well in any of the first states before voters are choosing in another state. There will be little time for voters to re-examine Iowa’s choice and decide whether that is their party’s best alternative.

If we started out to create a system for choosing the nominees of each party, is this really what reasonable, well-meaning people would have created? I doubt it. I would have four criteria for a new system:

» The people’s choice should be determinative rather than party big shots meeting in the 21st century equivalent of smoke-filled rooms.

» Outsiders would still have a chance to compete without being hobbled at the starting gate due to a lack of funds and a resulting lack of media attention.

» No one state or region would have a permanent ability to impact the choice.

» People who live in states other than the opening states would be permitted a voice in the ultimate selection.

I would like to see a set of six to eight regional primaries taking place every two or three weeks. A candidate who didn’t have much name recognition or money might still be able to make an impact in the opening region and see whether his or her message catches fire.

There would be enough space between the primaries for the public to digest the results and reassess the group as it is winnowed down. We could rotate which region went first each season.

A region that went late one election would have an opportunity to have an impact as it moved up in the calendar. Practically everyone except Hawkeyes and Granite State voters would recognize the essential fairness of the system, and we could get away from these quadrennial fusses over states trying to move up on New Hampshire while reporters try to interest readers in the Ames Straw Poll.

It’s too late to rescue 2008 from the wave of confusion that the front-loading on Tsunami Tuesday may bring. But it is well past time for the parties to devise a more rational system.

Betsy Newmark is a member of The Examiner’s Blog Board of Contributors and blogs at Betsyspage.blogspot.com.