Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is greeted by supporters in Las Vegas yesterday A change in Rhode Island’s its presidential primary election date could mean local voters would be see a lot more of him and other candidates.

AP / Jae C. Hong

PROVIDENCE — If political leaders succeed in moving up Rhode Island’s presidential primary, currently set for March 2008, the state will become a player in what may be the most unsettled, unpredictable, longest and costliest presidential campaign in American history.

With more than 650 days left before the November 2008 election, several states that normally hold late primaries are trying to get in on the early action of choosing the Democratic and Republican nominees. What once was a fairly simple process is about to become a chaotic campaign that will dominate media coverage even as President Bush and a Democratic-controlled Congress try to govern for two more years.

No one in either party knows yet what the nominating calendar of primaries and caucuses will look like. At this point, four states appear to have locked up the early dates for primaries and caucuses on the Democratic side — Iowa (Jan. 14), Nevada (Jan. 19), New Hampshire (Jan. 22) and South Carolina (Jan. 29).

Republicans so far have settled on only the Iowa and New Hampshire dates and a Feb.2 primary in South Carolina. But many states are toying with or thinking seriously about moving their primaries ahead to become players in the choice of the presidential candidates, in effect creating a national primary on Feb. 5, ensuring an early end to the selection process and a long and bitter eight-month general election campaign.

Among the states moving to hold their elections earlier are California, New Jersey, Florida and New York — all populous states with many delegates — which would further roil the election system.

Rhode Island’s General Assembly leaders last week endorsed legislation to shift the state’s presidential primary to Feb. 5.

“If the job of scheduling the presidential nominating contests were assigned to an insane asylum, this is pretty much what the patients would come up with,” says Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia and longtime follower of the presidential selection process. “It is a disaster in so many different ways.”

The way Americans choose their presidents has always been Balkanized, mainly, experts say, because the U.S. Constitution ignores presidential selection.

“In the beginning, the country didn’t have parties,” said Sabato. “The founders were suspicious of parties. So they ignored politics.”

What has emerged in the two centuries since is a series of state-by-state caucuses and primaries that choose delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Delegates at those conventions then choose the party’s candidates for president and vice president.

As recently as 1968, the country had 14 state presidential primaries scheduled between March and June. The presidential selection process started in the snows of New Hampshire in March and ended with the California primary in June. In between, party leaders in other states chose delegates, meaning presidential candidates were picked by influential and entrenched party leaders.

In 2008, a minimum of 42 primaries will be held, Sabato said. In 1980, just one state had a primary by the end of February. By 2000, 9 states did so, and in 2004, 19. Next year, 30 or more states are on track to move into January or February.

From 1952 to 1988, no candidate or either party became president without winning New Hampshire’s first-in-the nation primary. In recent years that has changed, making the New Hampshire primary an election that winnows the field of candidates rather than acting as the kingmaker.

Still, one of the main reasons the primary and caucus system is scrambled is that New Hampshire government officials cling zealously to the state’s leadoff status. For example, while national party officials have prescribed Jan. 22 as the date of its primary, New Hampshire’s secretary of state, William Gardner, who actually sets the election date, will wait until other states have set their calendars before announcing the date of the New Hampshire primary.

New Hampshire law calls for its primary to be held one week before any other state presidential primary. Gardner intends to follow that law, says Dan Scanlan, New Hampshire’s deputy secretary of state.

With other states threatening to shift into New Hampshire’s territory — Wyoming Republicans recently moved to hold a nominating caucus on the same day as New Hampshire’s primary — New Hampshire may retaliate by shifting its primary into December 2007, says Dante Scala, political science professor at St. Anslem College, in Manchester, N.H.

“It could be, sing ‘Joy to the World’ and let’s go vote,” says Scala, only half in jest, referring to a primary that could be held during the Christmas holiday season.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, candidates run for president as if they were competing for governor, or even state representative. Candidates meet and greet voters in church basements, at Rotary Clubs and answer questions in endless town meetings. (Arizona Sen. John McCain took part in 114 town meetings in New Hampshire in 2000).

This is the essence of retail politics. After New Hampshire and Iowa, presidential campaigns have traditionally become a blur of television appearances and airport rallies, scripted tours designed to get a candidate the most media coverage.

Now, all the top tier campaigns, such as those of Democrats Hillary Clinton of New York and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, and of Republicans such as McCain and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, are aiming to raise $100 million or more, far more than has ever been spent on winning a major party’s nomination.

During the 1992 election cycle, the major Democratic candidates had raised less than $10 million combined in the year before the primaries and caucuses began, recalls Tad Devine, a Washington consultant who has worked on many presidential campaigns but is unaffiliated so far in the 2008 race.

In 1992, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton went into the election year with about $ million, Iowa Sen. Thomas Harkin raised $2 million and then-Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey had harvested about $2 million in campaign money.

“The calendar hasn’t been talked about much at all publicly, but at the last Democratic National Committee meeting it was all people were talking about,” says William Lynch, Rhode Island’s Democratic state chairman.

In Rhode Island, political figures are already lining up behind their favorite candidates. On the Republican side, Giuliani has already held a Providence fundraiser and has support from former Gov. Lincoln C. Almond, Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, former Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey and John Holmes Jr., of Bristol, the former GOP state chairman. Mitt Romney, who recently left office as Massachussetts governor, has support from Governor Carcieri and McCain has drawn support from House Minority Leader Robert Watson, R-East Greenwich, and a bevy of other GOP lawmakers and former lawmakers.

But it is Hillary Clinton who has the strongest ties to state political figures and money-raisers. Former Providence Mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr. and current Mayor David N. Cicilline are among a passel of proven fundraisers who are scurrying to round up contributions of $1,000 or more for a big Clinton event in Boston on March 30.

The feeling among Clinton’s campaign people is that a huge war chest would enable her to withstand an early defeat in a small state such as Iowa or New Hampshire, Lynch says.

Money is important but not the only gauge of whether a presidential nominating campaign will be successful or not, says Devine. In 2004, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean had the most money — about $50 million — heading into Iowa and New Hampshire. But mistakes by Dean and his campaign aides cost him dearly and, when he failed to do well in either state, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry stepped quickly into the void and sewed up the Democratic nomination.

“I think the early events are still important,” said Devine. “As the front-runner, [Clinton] is going to have to win a couple of early states.”

The larger question, says Sabato, the University of Virginia professor, is what a nearly two-year campaign does to the government. “I don’t know how Bush and the Democratic Congress are going to get anything done with all the noise of a full-blown presidential campaign going on every day.”

In the end, Sabato said, the 2008 campaign for the WhiteHouse may lead Congress to try to find a better way to elect major party candidates.

“I think this may have to be addressed with a constitutional amendment laying out a process,” said Sabato.

smackay@projo.com