When I became editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette later in 2008, I wondered whether I would have the courage to voice this heresy from such a prominent Iowa forum during the 2012 caucus season. Other opportunities drew me away from Iowa, so I offer my opinion now, one week before the 2012 caucuses, from the safety of Virginia.

While I am no longer living in the state, I offer this view with a lot of love for Iowa and a ton of caucus experience.

I am an Air Force brat with wanderlust and no hometown, but I am deeply and fondly tied to Iowa, more than any other state. I graduated from high school and started my journalism career in Shenandoah, Iowa. Depending on how you count time going to college in Fort Worth, Texas, but coming home to Iowa for summers and vacations and time I spent commuting between two states, I lived in Iowa for 13 to 19 years. And that doesn't count 10 years at the Omaha World-Herald, covering Iowa stories frequently and visiting family in Iowa often.

My wife Mimi is an Iowa farm girl (who disagrees with me on this topic). Our three deceased parents are buried in Iowa and we both still have siblings living in Iowa. Two of our sons were born there (the third was born in Omaha when we lived in Iowa).

I spent a decade at the Des Moines Register, most of that time when it was a statewide newspaper that set the agenda for the state and dominated caucus coverage. Few journalists have covered as many Iowa caucus campaigns as I have, in as many different ways (I'll detail my caucus experience in a separate blog post on caucus day). I enjoyed 15 minutes of fame in 1983-84 as the creator of the Iowa Caucus Game (a board game that was never updated as video game or app, alas).

I don't share any of the bizarre (and mostly false or exaggerated) notions of Iowa that Stephen Bloom voiced in his Atlantic essay that has been widely criticized and mocked (more on that in a footnote). My problem is not at all with Iowa itself, but with the notion that any state should claim the first spot in line in perpetuity and with the exaggerated self-importance that Iowans use to justify their claim to that spot.

Iowans are a patriotic lot, so I plead with them to relinquish their death-grip on the first spot for the good of the nation. Here are eight reasons why we need to let someone else be the first to express presidential preferences: