This week begins the official portion of the 2008 Presidential Beauty Contest. The Hawkeye Caucii (or Iowa Caucus) kicks off the season, and all political eyes are on Iowa. This brings a few questions to mind for me.
1. Why does Iowa get to go first? It is a relatively small state that requires candidates to pander to the ethanol and farm lobbies.
2. Is Iowa representative of America? Fewer than 150,000 people, or less than 5% of Iowans will probably participate in a non-secret ballot format, and this will determine delegates to a nominating convention?
3. Is making people stand in squares in the high school gym the best way to pick a president?
All of this just boggles my mind. And the folks in Iowa treat this as their birthright, as if they were destined to be the arbiters of who is elected. By the time this rolls through Iowa and New Hampshire (another bunch of self-important election snobs) half of the candidates will be knocked out of the process. Two relatively small states function as the winnowing agent? I just don't get it.
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1 comment:
The whole process takes too long. Most of these candidates have been running for a year or more (and John Edwards hasn't stopped running since 2004). We still have 10 months until we elect a new president. (And then John Edwards will be living in Iowa, again.)
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