Recent Democratic nomination contests masked the potentially prolonging effects of the current rules, which tend to allow non-frontrunner candidates to hang on longer. In 1996, incumbent president Bill Clinton was essentially unopposed. In 2000, Al Gore's advantage as incumbent vice president left little room for the challenge by Bill Bradley. And despite the crowded field of 2004 the desire to pick somebody - anybody - to take on George W. Bush compelled Democratic voters to fall quickly into line behind John Kerry after his Iowa and New Hampshire wins.
But last year's titanic clash between Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton revealed what can happen when two equally matched candidates battle deep into the process. Operatives for the Obama campaign later claimed that the extended primary battle forced them to create a field apparatus in states like Indiana and North Carolina that, they believe, eventually helped them defeat Mr. McCain in those states. Still, many Democrats were rightly worried that a too-long primary fight was self-destructive for the party.
As for the GOP, Mr. McCain won the 2008 nomination despite thin support from the religious-social conservative wing of the party. He effectively cleared the field by early March but still managed to lose 19 of 50 states to either Mr. Huckabee or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
In a pleasant, even ironic turn of events from his defeat there eight years earlier, Mr. McCain won the 2008 South Carolina primary. But he did so with a mere 33 percent of the vote - because Mr. Huckabee and Tennessee's Fred Thompson split about 60 percent of the vote. The rules worked to Mr. McCain's advantage.
Ms. Kamarck advocates a mix of proportional-allocation states early in the process followed later by winner-take-all contests. She believes that would winnow out longshot candidates in the beginning, then force consolidation around the best candidate without unnecessarily prolonging the nomination contest. This sequencing could have the added advantage of discouraging every state from trying to move to the front of the calendar.
The rules mattered in 2008 and will again in 2012. If Mayor Bloomberg still harbors White House ambitions, maybe he should offer his own recommendations.
Thomas F. Schaller teaches political science at UMBC. His column appears regularly in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is schaller67@gmail.com.
