IOWA OBSESSION: A piece in The Politico on the presidential campaign caught my eye today. It said, "Mitt and Ann Romney will join Bill and Hillary Clinton in a parade along Main Avenue," guess where? Without reading the story, which gives it away in the lead, you might guess that the wealthy former governor of Massachusettes and a former president would be spending a vacation day in some town on Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod, right? Wrong. Both the Romneys and the Clintons couldn't think of a more exciting place to spend in July 4th than Clear Lake, Iowa. What a funny coincidence! And what, pray tell, makes Clear Lake, Iowa the place of choice for folks who could spend it anywhere in the world? Is it because they want to see the Surf Ballroom? The Clear Lake Visitor Infomration Website brags that, "Groups who have recently performed at the Surf include Cheap Trick, George Thorogood, Faith Hill, Brad Paisley and Tracy Lawrence." No it turns out that in America a couple of mostly rural, overwhelmingly white states, namely Iowa and New Hampshire, get to hold their presidential primaries before everyone else. Consequently winning the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses, an exercise in in pre-electronic politics whereby people who don't have four hours to spend hanging out at a caucus site are disenfranchised and people whose candidate gets less than 15 percent in their local have to choose someone else, is extremely important to presidential aspirants. Therefore, if you want to be leader of the free world, you'd better go march in that parade, since the 70,000 attendees will make up a wildly disproportionate percentage of the small number of the nation's voters who actually get a say in whom the major party nominees will be. This is sick. It's arguably as asinine as the electoral college. But unlike the electoral college the primary system isn't written into the Constitution and wouldn't be nearly as hard to change. All we need is for the national parties to adopt a new system, such as a one day national primary or a rotation of which state goes first each cycle. Let's at least give our candidates some choice about where they spend their holidays sucking up to voters. --Ben Adler
