As easy as it is to beat up on New Hampshire for so zealously protecting it's first-in-the-nation primary status, remember that Granite Staters were the only ones who saw the problems that would result from the DNC trying to use to cudgel to dictate its primary calendar. As Florida reporters lately have had to write campaign donation checks to hear Democratic presidential contenders in Florida -  like Bill Richardson in Coral Gables yesterday and Bill Clinton last week - consider the prescience of former Ambassador Terry Shumaker of New Hampshire. As a member of the DNC primary study commission that came up with the primary rules, he voted against them, and in a 2006 column predicted consequences that may have sounded absurd at the time:

"I wonder what the founding fathers, who risked their lives and honor for our freedoms, would think of senators and governors aspiring to be president being disciplined by an unelected committee of Washington insiders for making public appearances or speaking to the press."