They Won't Miss Much
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By GILBERT CRANBERG
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: October 24, 2003
nytimes.com
DES MOINES - Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, can fairly be accused of giving aid to the enemy by advising contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination to skip Iowa and focus on New Hampshire. Gen. Wesley Clark and Senator Joseph Lieberman embraced that sound advice this week and announced they would sit out the caucuses.
Senator McCain knows whereof he speaks, having bypassed Iowa in 2000 to whip George W. Bush in New Hampshire. Mr. McCain's campaign subsequently ran out of steam, but his showing in New Hampshire, which marked him as a serious contender, would not have been as successful had he diverted time, toil and treasure to Iowa's arcane caucus system.
Never answer a question from a farmer, Hubert Humphrey once half-joked. Iowa's caucuses not only showcase questions from farmers about the nearly impenetrable intricacies of agricultural economics, they also require a search for needles in haystacks. These are the little more than one in 10 registered Democrats who may actually attend the meetings.
Republicans aren't any more fond of the caucuses than Democrats; the caucuses Mr. McCain prudently ducked in 2000 were also passed up by more than 8 of every 10 registered Republicans. Identifying likely caucus-goers, motivating them to show up and be counted in support of a particular candidate, as Democratic Party rules direct, requires a monumental organizing effort. Which is why John Kerry, Richard Gephardt, John Edwards and Howard Dean commute to Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Sioux City (and points in between) almost every week.
Mr. Dean, for example, was recently seen beating the bushes for caucus-goers in Howard County (population: 9,806), near the Minnesota border. With that visit he can now boast of having set foot in every one of Iowa's 99 counties, a feat few lifelong Iowans have achieved, much less wanted to attempt. At last count, according to his campaign, Mr. Dean had spent at least 78 days in the state.
And for what? Surely not for delegates. Iowa is vote-poor, with only 55 voting delegates at the national convention, where there will be more than 4,000 voting delegates. The state is publicity-rich, however, by virtue of its first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Never mind that the caucuses do not even demonstrate how many votes each candidate actually attracts on caucus night. Iowa Democrats shun head counts, because that would infringe on New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary, which features an actual tally of voters.
Instead, Iowa Democrats have concocted an abstruse system for calculating delegate equivalents. On Jan. 19, each of the state's 1,997 precincts holds a meeting to determine what percentage of that precinct's delegates will support a particular candidate five months later at the Democratic Party's state convention, when Iowa's national convention delegates are actually selected.
One of these days, perhaps, it will become commonplace for candidates to decide not to pose with pigs in Iowa. If so, the absence of General Clark and Mr. Lieberman could be seen as the beginning of the end of Iowa as a required stop on the way to the White House.
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Gilbert Cranberg is former editor of the editorial page of The Des Moines Register. |
