This is no way to pick a president

With no Iowa Straw Poll to give early insights into Republican presidential hopefuls' viability, a single national media outlet has been tasked with sorting an extraordinarily large field of candidates into varsity and junior varsity teams.

The first GOP debate, hosted by Fox News tonight in Ohio, will feature only 10 of the 17 party candidates, whose qualifications were based on an average of five national polls.

The remaining candidates will be allowed to speak at an afternoon event. That is bad news for voters in early states such as Iowa, and also for GOP candidates.

On one hand, we can sympathize with the Republican National Committee's acceptance of the setup, given that the party is tasked with managing such a large field of GOP presidential hopefuls.

But using national polling - which can be as much a measurement of name recognition as anything else this early in the season - to measure a candidate's viability is a poor way to winnow the pool.

Voters in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada are the most engaged and informed about the candidates of either party. If popularity polling must be a determining factor, perhaps future debate organizers could look to these states for guidance.

The complications posed by this supersized campaign only will be made worse by a new class of mega-donors, who will be able to keep on life support those campaigns which formerly would have folded early under a lack of public interest.

Like or loathe the influences of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and today's fragmented media landscape, both are heavily shaping this political contest, as they will campaigns to come.

Selection of the next U.S. president shouldn't be based on brand names or Internet-friendly sound bites, however offensive or radical. The game might have changed, but the end goal remains the same: to thoughtfully select the next leader of the country. That is voters' task.

How do we accomplish that? We aren't entirely sure. While it's clear that some long-standing campaign traditions no longer are working, we haven't yet seen a road map to allow voters to fully vet serious presidential candidates while winnowing this oversized field.

But one thing is certain: For the sake of candidates, voters and the future of our country, we've got to find a better way.

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