Supposed to be the beginning
For the better part of 20 years, my weekend has included the soundtrack of NPR and the week’s news in review. This weekend, the review was peppered with discussion surrounding the Iowa Caucus.
This milestone is supposed to mark the launch of the presidential campaign season. I have come to think of it instead as an event that marks the end.
We are supposed to see Iowa as a bellwether predictor for the delegates moving into the general election.
This year, with an incumbent president taking half the game out the equation, we are really only concerned with one party at this point. And that party has struggled with ferocity for the past year to identify a clear front-runner.
I like the concept of a caucus. I think the Republican caucus process in Iowa where voters gather across the state and after hearing from candidates, either write a name on a blank piece of paper or fill out a pre-printed ballot or, as happened in 2008, take a vote by show of hands.
Simple and inclusive.
The Democratic caucus process in Iowa is a bit more complicated, consisting of different phases and viability thresholds, but it ends up with the same idea of attempting to gather the opinions of voters on who they would like to see represent them as president.
While I understand the notion that for the sake of story, we need to have some kind of beginning. And Iowa seems as good a place as any to mark this beginning. But over time, it has felt less and less like a real start.
It already feels like we’ve been at this thing forever. The front runner on the Republican side has changed so many times in the past year, the mud has been slung, the name-calling is already well underway.
More and more, it seems as though our presidential process is more about stamina: economic stamina (how deep are your pockets); physical stamina (how long can you run on no sleep); and emotional stamina (how many personal attacks can you stomach).
We end up perhaps not with the best candidate, but the one with the most stamina.
While Mitt Romney squeaked out a win this week, he’s hardly a “favorite.” In fact, he seems to hang around because he is well-resourced to do so. He has economic, physical and emotional stamina.
Meanwhile, voters keep clamoring to try to find someone else to support.
Over the course of the past year, each time a candidate emerges that seems to even have a remote chance of being an alternative to Mitt, he has a meteoric rise to the top.
Note:
Rick Perry
Herman Cain
Newt Gingrich
Ron Paul
Rick Santorum
Each of these candidates has almost taken the role of “at least its not Mitt” for the voter who is already decided that Obama is not their pick.
But then eventually the shine is eroded from these “at least its not” candidates, the skeletons in their closets emerge, they turn out to be flawed (just like the rest of us) and those flaws are amplified until we are right back to a Mitt who seems to now just be hanging out, stumping, and letting the “at least its not” candidates duke it out.
Is the process now to just exhaust the voter until we vote just to get the damn thing over with? Almost as if we get to a point where we say, “FINE!! I’ll vote for you if it means I can turn off the noise and get back to my life!”
Voter stamina is a real thing, too. And it’s getting harder to sustain as the election process extends for as long as it has.
In light of this, Iowa hardly seems like the beginning of the political season. If it is the beginning of anything, it is the beginning of the end. At least when we get to Iowa we can start to see the finish line.
I know there are people who enjoy this process. Who are true political junkies. I for one, would prefer substance over stamina. From where I sit, November can’t come too soon.
