You’ve heard it a gazillion times: “The primary calendar this year is terrible.”

A lot of what a media personality does is use the “authoritative analysis voice” to repeat the entirely obvious. Right now everybody is talking about how horrible the compressed 2008 primary calendar is. “Well, Tucker, given this year’s primary calendar, which is totally out of control, it’s possible that …” as though it’s as obvious as “Well Tucker, the sky, which is blue today …” But despite the widespread consensus that this is obvious, nobody actually bothers to make an argument about what’s bad about it.

Yes, the 2008 primary calendar is indeed different than in the past. In 2004, Iowa and New Hampshire fell at the middle and end of January, respectively. Feb. 3 saw seven very small states, with 12 Democratic and five Republican contests following throughout the rest of the month. Only on March 2 and March 9 did big states like California, New York, Texas and Florida start committing delegates. In 2000, the calendar was much the same for the Republicans; the Democrats’ contest was only slightly more drawn out. This year a month was effectively cut out of the standard calendar, with many former start-of-March states moving their primaries to the beginning of February.

Strategically, this means two different things. One, candidates had more time to develop different messages. In 2000, when McCain beat Bush’s “I am a compassionate conservative” in New Hampshire, Bush had 18 days to retool his message and find a winning formula, carrying South Carolina with “John McCain has an out-of-wedlock black child.”

If we don’t see that kind of political message under the new, compressed calendar it doesn’t seem like a huge loss to our political system. But there are legitimate fears. For example, some are worried there is an undiscovered fact or message that will absolutely destroy Republican candidate Mike Huckabee. Because the compressed calendar has allowed him to go from unknown to front-runner so quickly, the GOP may not find out until it’s too late.

The second worry is that a compressed calendar promotes fundraising and media buys over retail politics. You can win in Iowa and New Hampshire with a lot of legwork even if you’re outspent 10 to one. But in places like California, New York, Florida, or Texas, it’s just not possible to cover enough ground to meet a significant fraction of the voters. In the big states, you communicate with junk mail, media coverage, and TV and radio ads.

Pundits have worried that this kind of “national primary” will make it harder for up-and-comer, dark-horse candidates to compete – unknowns like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton who won upsets and gradually turned the momentum of the race over the course of a lot of hard-fought ground campaigns.

On the other hand, retail politics isn’t necessarily all we want in a candidate. Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, for example, are impressive campaigners who nevertheless seem to alienate every voter they actually meet. Perhaps they will fare better in big states where raising money to get on television is a more important skill than shaking hands at pancake breakfasts – and who is to say which process is more relevant in picking a president?

The pundits seem to be nostalgic for the “marathon primary” – an endurance contest with a premium on accumulating a small advantage in every stage and building momentum to go into the national contest an assured winner.

In contrast, 2008 is a “triathlon primary” – the retail politics running race isn’t the deciding contest, so candidates can also compete on TV, through fundraising, building endorsements and competing for coverage. Retail-politics states like Iowa are still relevant, but no longer decisive, and big-media-buy states like California are now relevant – not instead, but as well.

So far, the “triathlon primary” seems to be doing pretty well. It’s giving dark-horse candidates like McCain and Huckabee a chance to come from behind and upset the establishment figures, but it is also giving Giuliani a chance to blow the dark horses out of the water in the later contests with a bigger budget and better name recognition, even though he sat out the early races.

Despite the consensus of 99 percent of the chattering class, the 2008 primary process doesn’t seem terrible at all.