It's Jimmy Carter's Fault

It's Jimmy Carter's Fault

The Iowa caucuses, one more thing to blame on Jimmy Carter.

"DES MOINES, Jan. 18 — Exactly 28 years ago Monday, a little-known former governor of Georgia named Jimmy Carter polled just shy of 30 percent support in Iowa's precinct caucuses. He came in second, nine points behind "uncommitted," but the national news media proclaimed him the clear winner of the year's first presidential nominating contest, if only because he had finished so far ahead of everyone else.

Mr. Carter spent that caucus night not in Iowa, but in New York City, so he could be available for all three network news programs the next morning: none of them had sent anchors to Des Moines. Because he went on to win not only the Democratic nomination but also the White House, nothing about this state's politics has ever been quite the same."

Did you pick that up? No anchors were in Iowa that day. That's because it meant nothing. It still deserves to mean nothing, but this is the slow news period, between the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl, and the networks need to manufacture news. You can't always depend up Laci Peterson or Michael Jackson after all.