Patt In The Hat

Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison (she of the omnipresent hat) has long been a favorite of mine. Like Rosa Brooks, she uses humor to highlight the absurdity of "common wisdom", although Ms. Morrison prefers drollery to snark. Her column yesterday, written before the results of the Iowa Caucus, pretty much skewers most of the notions on the importance of the two earliest primaries.

This can't be a joke because there's a writers strike on and jokes are out for the duration. So in all unscripted seriousness, I ask, could Hollywood really be smarter than Washington? Is it possible that movie people are savvier than political people?

Amazing but ... yes!

When it comes to its hallowed Oscar nominations, Hollywood sensibly waits until a whole year's worth of eligible films has been released before it chooses the nominees for the Academy Award for best picture. But that's not how the Beltway handles its own exalted presidential nominations. It's not the way the Democratic or the Republican parties operate either.

This evening in Iowa, perhaps as many as 200,000 party loyalists will caucus for presidential candidates. The TV wiseacres, the ones Calvin Trillin calls the "Sabbath gasbags," assure us that those votes will shape the win, place and show rankings for the rest of the nation. Five days later, about 400,000 voters in New Hampshire will seal the deal. This, the same pundits tell us, creates momentum, even inevitability for a nominee; the rest of the country is welcome to second the motion. [Emphasis added]

With the nominating conventions six months away, and the general elections ten months away, the Sunday bobble heads and the two parties would have us believe that six hundred thousand voters determine who the candidates will be. That means the rest of us can just stay home until November, which, to a large extent, is what will happen.

A lot can happen in six months, as Ms. Morrison points out, and, given the current administration, a lot probably will. Unfortunately, voters won't have a chance to gauge how most of the candidates respond to crises or even just bad news. Why? Because most of them will be priced out of the market. Those who don't finish first or second in Iowa and New Hampshire will find it hard to raise the money necessary to continue their campaigns. Ms. Morrison nails it with this money quote:

In a way, what we've been thinking is an endless campaign is actually an extremely long fundraiser, meant to scare up money and to scare other candidates with the threat of it.

And that's the shame of it.