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Jewish World Review
January 3, 2008
/ 25 Teves 5768
The Flawed but Useful Iowa Caucuses
By
Michelle Malkin
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
This much is certain on the day after the Iowa caucuses: There will be plenty of kvetching and moaning about the system. The winners will praise the Hawkeye State's voters as the wisest voters in America and celebrate the process as a shining example of democracy in action. The losers will assail it as unfair, exclusive, convoluted, unrepresentative, archaic and in screaming need of reform.
One Hillary Clinton supporter much to the campaign's chagrin couldn't keep his lips buttoned before the votes were cast. Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland complained to the Columbus Dispatch that it "makes no sense" to give Iowa the right to hold the first presidential contest and lambasted the caucuses as "hugely undemocratic" because the process "excludes so many people." USA Today spotlighted the "goofy," "eccentric" ritual quoting Sen. Carl Levin attacking the system as "cockamamie." The New York Times chimed in the day before the Iowa caucuses with a piece bemoaning the plight of Iowa voters who won't be able to cast votes because work and family conditions will prevent them from attending the lengthy nighttime meetings.
Yes, the rules are bizarre particularly the Democrats' arcane setup eschewing paper ballots and forcing nonviable candidates with less than 15 percent of the vote from caucusgoers to throw their votes to one of the frontrunners. Yes, the pandering to farmers and ethanol interests is noxious. And yes, the spectacle of Hillary Clinton lining up baby-sitters and Barack Obama scheduling rides for Iowa caucusgoers smacks of a Nanny State gone wild.
Still, the process does have its benefits. Retail politics is a demanding business. It punishes candidates who would rather sit back in their East Coast comfort zones, tape slick ads and campaign on autopilot. It requires discipline, focus and drive. It requires a thick skin, stamina and an ability to withstand enormous voter and media scrutiny. But there's more:
Mitt Romney's managerial prowess and large campaign chest should have guaranteed a huge, easy win. But Mike Huckabee's surprise rise over the past several weeks showed that money alone isn't everything. The grassroots matter.
Celebrity appeal helps. But except for a botched campaign event in which staffers dissed a local supporter who had organized a campaign event at his farm because he didn't meet the death tax threshold, nationally prominent Rudy Giuliani was a nonentity in Iowa. And Fred Thompson's failure to catch fire showed that star power and Internet buzz aren't enough to cut it, either.
The toss-up on the Democrat side underscored those points. Neither the Clinton machine nor Obama's Oprah factor nor John Edwards' moneybags alone sealed the deal.
As The Economist put it in an editorial offering praise for the American process: "Money and organisation matter far less than stamina, agility and that most unfakeable of all political attributes, charisma. Anyone deficient will be found out: anyone with the right stuff has a chance to shine."
We may have grown sick and tired of the endless debates and campaign circus, but the process helpfully spotlighted fundamental character flaws. Hillary's botched illegal alien driver's license answer put her open-borders incoherence on full display. Her dumpster-diving into rival Obama's grade-school essays showed her utter pettiness. Iowans and the rest of us got to see how she and her operatives acted under pressure: by planting questioners, slinging underhanded cocaine references at Obama, and then freezing out the press (including a poor 9-year-old girl who wanted to interview Chelsea Clinton).
I may not agree with the outcomes of the Iowa caucuses (and keep in mind that winning Iowa doesn't guarantee a White House victory). But I much prefer this system to a process that would anoint a deep-pocketed frontrunner allergic to flyover country who wishes he could just phone it in.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Michelle Malkin's column by clicking here.
Michelle Malkin Archives
MICHELLE'S LATEST:
In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild
Un·hinged
adj : affected with madness or insanity; [syn: brainsick, crazy, demented, distracted, disturbed, mad, sick, unbalanced]
The American Heritage Dictionary
*** Warning: Unhinged liberals are hazardous to the nation's health.
They're slashing your tires. Burning your lawns. Heaving pies at Republican pundits. Hurling racist epithets at minority conservatives. Nursing nutty conspiracy theories. And pining publicly for the murder of President Bush.
And they call us crazy?
In In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild, Michelle Malkin plays conservative Margaret Mead to the alien political creatures of the American Left. With uproarious detail and rollicking reportage, Malkin chronicles the bizarre world of leftists gone mad in their natural habitats: the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, and Washington.
Unhinged unmasks liberals who've completely abandoned rationality and reality. They're taking chainsaws and bayonets to campaign signs. Running down political opponents with their cars. Setting fire to political opponents in effigy. Defacing war memorials. Swiping yellow ribbons off cars. And supporting the fragging of American troops.
In Unhinged, you'll meet:
- The Top 10 Unhinged Leftists, Celebrities, Media Liberals, and Politicians. - The Pennsylvania Democrat who repeatedly screamed "faggot" at his Republican opponents on the Senate floor. - The Florida Democrat who tried to run down former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris with his Cadillac. - The Democrat congressman who claimed the capture of Saddam Hussein was staged by GOP operatives to help the Bush re-election campaign. - The veteran newsman who claimed that Bush advisor Karl Rove and Osama bin Laden are working hand-in-hand to help the Republican Party. - And hundreds more unhinged liberals gone wild!
With wit, wisdom, and a bullet-proof vest, Michelle Malkin ruthlessly and raucously skewers the myths of liberal tolerance, peace, and civility. Unhinged shows how conservatives are driving their opponents mad. The good news for liberals? Self-help starts here.
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