Annals of the Media: Disgracing Themselves Once Again

Theatergoers at Dublin's Abbey Theatre didn't like what they were seeing onstage in Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars in its initial run in 1926.

Bad enough that the playwright had been even more critical of the struggle for Ireland's independence than he had been in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock. Now, he had compounded the indignity by including a prostitute character – a gesture that reminded many in the audience of another insult to Irish womanhood nineteen years before in John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, when one line – a reference to a woman in her "shift," or underwear – sparked a riot in the fledgling theater. Now the booing, hissing and general carrying-on were being repeated.

Rising to the stage "like an ancient Roman senator," according to one cast member, Abbey founder and Ireland's leading literary light, Nobel Prize-winning poet William Butler Yeats, peered down at the raucous audience with Olympic scorn as he pronounced judgment: "You have disgraced yourselves again."

Would that some figure with authority comparable to Yeats might talk sense to a media beast as wild in its way as the mob that roiled the Abbey more than 80 years ago. With the New Hampshire primary nearing an end, and the Iowa caucus still not far behind in the rear-view mirror, it’s time that someone call the media to account for giving two such small states not just weighty, but shamefully disproportionate influence on the way we choose our Presidents.

At least with New Hampshire there’s some reason behind the media attention. Two incumbent Presidents, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, thought better of their re-election bids after worse-than-expected results against a senatorial challenger (Estes Kefauver in 1952 and Eugene McCarthy sixteen years later). And at least voters’ preferences are registered directly, rather than through precinct delegates.

No such luck with Iowa. In her column last week, The New York Times' Gail Collins describes what the Democrats’ 1,781 local caucuses are like: "Past history suggests that a few of these gatherings may not draw any attendees whatsoever and that several others will consist entirely of a guy named Carl. Attendances has no effect on the number of delegates involves, and we hardly need mention that the whole things is weighted to give rural residents an advantage. Iowans in politically active neighborhoods where 100 people show up may find their vote is worth only 1 percent as much as, say, Carl's."

At least Republicans use a head count. (That’s the last kind thing I’ll say about that largely pathetic bunch.) The Democrats' system works like this: They don't report straight numbers, but use a mathematical formula to determine support for a candidate in percentages. A candidate must have the support of 15 percent of those present at any meeting, precinct caucuses through the state convention, to remain ``viable.''

And that doesn't even finish it. Delegates chosen at the caucuses go to the county convention later in the year. There, the field is winnowed and delegates are chosen for the district convention. This happens again at district meetings and again at the state convention, where delegates are named to attend the party's national convention.

Forget about all those hanging chads that everybody screamed about in 2000. Whatever happened to something more elemental, like one man, one vote? Does this strike anyone as democratic with a small "c", never mind a large one?

Why does this insanity persist? Go back to 1976, when Jimmy Carter’s campaign strategists spun his unexpectedly strong performance into a triumph for the former-governor-turned-peanut farmer-turned-wannabe-President. But the real winner that night? “Uncommitted,” which outpulled the Georgian 37% to 28%.

Iowa is hardly representative of the nation’s largest demographic or commercial trends. It ranks 30th in population – perhaps not “the lowest of the low,” as Bush I famously described Arkansas under Bill Clinton, but below the median – and its combined black-Hispanic population is less than 6%.

Or consider the following facts:

* In 2004, just 6% of the state's eligible voters attended a caucus. (So what if this year’s turnout doubled the 2004 numbers – it was already working with a terribly small base.)
* The only non-incumbents ever to win an Iowa Caucus in a race without a President were Jimmy Carter and, in 2000, George W. Bush (who might as well have been an incumbent, given the brand recognition and party network he inherited from daddy).
* According to Iowa economist Harvey Siegelman, the 2004 caucus brought in between $50 million and $60 million (bringing unexpected meaning to the term "high on the hog").

I haven’t decided whom to vote for this year. But I would love Rudy Guiliani to win at least one primary contest to underscore his wisdom in bypassing this unrepresentative, undemocratic state. I want him to dispose of its central role in Presidential politics the way Rasputin’s assassins took care of the mad monk: poison it, shoot it, pummel it, and throw it off a bridge into the watery, midwinter grave it deserves.

Internal editor: “Oh, come on. The state can’t be all THAT bad. Surely there’s something good to say about it.” MT: “Yeah? Let’s hear it.” (Squaring his shoulders and looking directly at the camera, like Robert Conrad in a mid-‘70s TV commercial): “Go ahead. I dare you!”