Lessons from Iowa

The only important lesson to come from yesterday's Iowa presidential caucuses is that we should do away with Iowa's presidential caucuses. And, while we're at it, let's scrap the New Hampshire primary as well.

All the pundits today are declaring Sen. Barack Obama and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee the current front-runners for the Democratic and Republic party nominations respectively. Why? Because they won yesterday in Iowa.

Iowa. That's the place where an estimated 239,000 Democrats, most of whom are far more liberal than Democrats in other parts of the country, and 108,000 Republicans, most of whom are far more fundamentalist Christian than Republicans in other parts of the country, turned out to caucus. That's a total of 347,000 folks who are not that representative of the population of the country as a whole. Let's see, according to figures available on the Dallas County Elections Web site, there are 1,599,868 eligible voters in the county alone--about five times the number that turned out to caucus in the entire state of Iowa. Then next week we'll get a primarily all-white electorate turning out in New Hampshire.

Here's what needs to happen and the sooner the better. We need to create five election districts in this country--the Northeast, the Southeast, the Midwest, the Southwest and the Northwest. We then have a presidential primary in each district with the order in which they are held rotated every four years.

And what have I learned about the presidential candidates? I've learned that Mr. Obama advocates change, but is not specific when it comes to exactly what needs to be changed. Hillary Clinton also promises change, all the while clinging to her experience as a former First Lady. John Edwards is a former tort lawyer who is now trying to portray himself as a populist. All of them advocate immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but none of them address the consequences of such a withdrawal.

On the other side I see a host of Republicans still trying to prey on the politics of fear. Rudolph Giuliani has made a specialty of it while constantly changing his positions on just about every other topic from abortion to immigration. Mitt Romney, who spent the equivalent of $4 for every voter on advertising in Iowa, wants voters to remember him as the governor of Massachusetts but to ignore all the pro-choice, pro gay marriage positions he took while governor. Mr. Huckabee tries to portray himself as the most Christian of all candidates, but takes a very un-Christian-like attitude when the topic turns to illegal immigrants and or when he bullied Romney into defending his religious credentials (not to be confused with his religious beliefs). All the Republicans favor continuing our current disastrous Iraqi policy.

So the lessons from Iowa are not that pleasant to contemplate and I don't see anything better coming out of New Hampshire. Perhaps there will be reason for hope and optimism around this time next month.