Iowa. New Hampshire. Really?

Iowa and New Hampshire have an inordinate amount of influence in the presidential primaries.  In our two party system, primaries can be the time when a great variety of ideas from across the spectrum can be debated.  But so often, the field of candidates is narrowed very early and on the basis of results in Iowa and New Hampshire. The dialogue is cut short.  I grew up in North Carolina and by the time the primaries got to us, it was over. 

I don’t understand why Iowa and New Hampshire should be given such influence.  Every election cycle they are the focus for months and months and months while the rest of the country is virtually ignored.  It skews things.   Just as one instance, the argument can be made that the placement of Iowa in the primaries has a lot to do with why we have grain subsidies and ethanol.

 In actual fact, ethanol may not be a good idea, in terms of the environment.  (Here’s an interesting article on that debate: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ethanol-corn-climate) It is a positive sign that a number of Republican contenders this year are opposing federal subsidies.  Of course Gingrich and Romney, the front runners, support them.  That is probably not a coincidence. (You may read more here: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/bachmann-says-she-opposes-enthanol-subsidies-at-iowa-forum/)

New Hampshire is a strange choice to be given such power and status in the primaries.  For one thing, “white” people comprise almost 94% of the population.  The State is hardly representative of the ethnic diversity in the country at large.   In addition, New Hampshire is just plain cranky.

I am reading a novel by Alexander Theroux that presents an interesting take on the State.  The protagonist of the novel says, “New Hampshire has always been cheap, mean, rural, small-minded, and reactionary.  It’s one of the few states in the nation with neither a sales tax nor an income tax. Social services are totally inadequate there, it ranks at the bottom in state aid to education…and its medical assistance program is virtually nonexistent.  Expecting aid for the poor there is like looking for an egg under a basilisk.  It places lowest nationally in what it spends on anything.  The state encourages skinflints, cheapskates, shutwallets, and pinched little joykillers who move there as a tax refuge to save money. There isn’t a significant cultural center anywhere.  There are part-time police forces, all-volunteer fire departments, and no municipal water or sewage or disposal facilities.”  (page 77 in “An Adultery”)

I get the whole “yankee thrift” thing.  And I can enjoy “cranky” as much as the next person.  Assuming  Theroux’s description is accurate to some degree, I believe there is a place for a pinched point of view in the larger dialogue. 

But that place is not at the top of the presidential primary schedule election cycle after election cycle.  The country would be better served if we would change it up.  Am I just being cranky?  Maybe.  But don’t you think we should give change a chance?   Wouldn’t it be nice to see candidates doing something other than eating deep fried butter in Iowa or hanging out with white people in yet another coffee shop in New Hampshire?   What if Mississippi and Oregon went first next time?  Or North Carolina and Nevada?  I can think of a lot of combinations I’d like to see over the same old same old.  And that’s the view from here.