Disproportionate influence

Washington Post:

Two states guard the campaign trail as though they own it. Their influence on national politics is wildly disproportionate to their modest populations. Neither has anything that could be called a large city, or a slum, or a sprawling suburb. Both are dotted with small towns where everyone knows everyone else. One is very white, the other whiter still.

Iowa and New Hampshire have defied all predictions of their impending obsolescence. By the time Iowans finish caucusing Thursday and New Hampshirites vote in their primary five days later, the course of the 2008 presidential race may have been shaped, before many people in 48 other states have even paid much attention.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D), whose own state of Michigan tried unsuccessfully to edge its way into the early primary picture this year, has dismissed one of those states' outsize roles in the primary process -- New Hampshire's -- as "cockamamie." And it's easy to understand the jealousy the rest of the country feels over the attention lavished on voters there and in Iowa.

In Grundy Center, for example, a farming community in northeast Iowa with a population just a hair over 2,500 (98.8 percent non-Hispanic white), presidential candidates have pulled into town to make stump speeches 13 times, according to a recent tally by the Des Moines Register.

When challenged, leaders in both Iowa and New Hampshire respond with one voice, citing tradition and the dedication of their citizens as justification for their special role. But beyond their status as campaign-trail behemoths, Iowa and New Hampshire have little in common.

As is apparent to any candidate or strategist or journalist shuttling from Manchester to Des Moines and back (flying over such temporarily irrelevant places as Ohio and Illinois), the two states are about as similar as ethanol and granola. As dirt and granite. As a John Deere tractor and a moose.

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It should be pointed out that Michigan is even less representative. It is a rust belt state suffering from high taxes and liberalism and its major metropolitan area, Detroit, looks a lot like Baghdad on a good day. Michigan represents all that is wrong with liberal Democrat government. These comparisons are one reason why I think there should be regional primaries that rotate every four years where every part of the country gets to make their case for what they want in leadership. A process that produced John Kerry four years ago can't be that wonderful.