Iowa Winnows the Field

Intelligencer Journal
Editorial
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

It's been more than a generation since any candidate who finished worse than third in the Iowa caucus has gone on to win a major party presidential nomination.

In other words, as of this morning, only three Democrats remain viable White House contenders. As Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker once put it, Iowa "winnows the field" for the rest of the country. By April 27, when Pennsylvanians finally get to vote, the parties already will have picked their candidates.

Every four years, other states grumble about Iowa hogging the spotlight. Yet inertia is on Iowa's side. The candidates have memorized the playbook for Iowa since the McGovern campaign wrote it more than 30 years ago. It's a manageable state, and consultants, candidates, reporters and analysts have grown fond of the routine - as have Iowans, who revel in the attention. Party leaders like an early contest because it gets internecine bloodletting out of the way quickly and gives the nominee ample time to train for the main event.

Iowa Democrats say they are typical of Democrats nationwide. They cluster in college towns and blue-collar communities.

But in some ways they do not reflect a diverse national party. Iowa Democrats tend to be conservative socially. They tend to favor Midwesterner candidates who are strong on agricultural issues.

Iowa is 94 percent white. (New Hampshire, traditionally next in line, is 96 percent white). Ironically, the dominant position of the Iowa caucus was an indirect result of Democratic Party reform in the '60s which was meant to break the hold of the bosses and open up the elections to minority groups and other "outsiders."

Furthermore, the winner of the Iowa competition tends to be the candidate with the best organization; hence its reputation for being "dominated by special interests," as Howard Dean complained in 2000.

The Iowa caucuses drew their modern authority from Democratic party rules, but the state Republican Party saw the bountiful media exposure and moved its caucus in 1976 to the same date as the Democrats.

If change comes soon to this program, it will be from the Democratic side. President Bush benefitted from an Iowa victory in 2000, and he has no need of one this year, so his party won't feel inclined to push for a new plan.

The Democratic national leadership had to put down a rebellion this year by Michigan, which tried to hold its nominating contest before Iowa's. But the party agreed to appoint a commission after the election to study change. One proposal is to have the first caucus and the first primary rotate from state to state over the years. That's a plan worth considering.

Wesley Clark and Joseph Lieberman have decided to snub the state this year and devote their time to New Hampshire. If either of them wins the nomination, this weakens Iowa's authority in the party.

Or if John Kerry, the winner of Monday night's contest, claims the nomination and goes on to fail miserably against President Bush in the fall, that could lend force to the argument that the Iowa-centric process produces candidates who can't stay afloat in the mainstream.

And while we're at it, it's time to revamp the process of the political debates.

The debates, after primary season ends, are in the hands of the Commission on Presidential Debates, an appendage of the two big parties.

A good start would be to lengthen the amount of time a candidate has to reply, from the current 90 seconds to something closer to 5 minutes. The reform group Open Debates also would like to see candidates have a chance to question one another and to face at least one town hall debate "where audience members ask questions that are not pre-screened, and can ask follow-up questions if the candidates dodge their question the first time around. This change would make the debates more about answering the electorate's questions, and less about answering the media's questions."