Our view: Iowa's straw poll doesn't deserve mega attention

The presidential election is 15 months off, but the political world is abuzz (sort of) about the Republican straw poll to be held in Ames, Iowa, on Saturday. Will Tea Party favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann win, as some insiders predict? Will former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty survive? What dark horses might emerge? And which candidate will do the best job of spinning his or her results to maximum effect?

Excited yet?

IOWA GOP CHAIRMAN: Celebrate Iowa's caucus

Didn't think so. Nor, in truth, are we. Events like this might provide a lift for party activists and political junkies, as well as breathless pundits who have hyped the event as a crucial step on the path to the Republican presidential nomination. But for the rest of us, there's little to like.

Start with the fact that the vote has a poor track record of predicting eventual winners. Only twice, out of five previous Iowa straw polls, has the winner gone on to capture the GOP nomination. And only once has the straw poll winner (George W. Bush in 1999) become president.

This year's contest is particularly hard to calibrate as two putative front-runners for the nomination are playing peripheral roles. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is on the ballot but has not been actively participating. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is not on the ballot, but might angle for write-in votes if he declares his candidacy Saturday. At best, the event is a way to winnow the field. Already, a decent showing is seen as make-or-break for Pawlenty, whose campaign is putting $1 million into the straw poll, even though no actual convention delegates are at stake.

Then there is the issue of the outsized role that quadrennial early birds Iowa and New Hampshire play in the nation's chaotic process for picking candidates to run for the world's most important job. A rational system would involve regional primaries that would rotate every four years to ensure that no part of the nation would always be first, or last.

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Instead, the Iowa straw poll prompts many Republican candidates to spend even more time and resources in one, not-particularly-diverse, state. That means Iowa's parochial interests, such as wasteful ethanol mandates and agriculture subsidies, tend to get more deference than they deserve.

Perhaps the biggest reason to be wary of this event is its potential to highlight the more extreme candidates. Participants in the straw poll pay $30 and often travel for hours to listen to speeches and hobnob with like-minded souls. This is a genuinely small sliver of humanity. Four years ago, just 14,302 Iowans voted in the straw poll, compared with 682,379 who voted for John McCain in the 2008 general election. And, without some mainstream candidate pouring money into the event to bring out the vote, the straw poll participants tend to be true believers who are not much interested in consensus-building candidates.

Of the candidates actively participating this year, only Pawlenty has any kind of background of centrism, and he has taken a right turn since announcing his candidacy. Much of the attention will be on Bachmann, who has been doing well in recent Iowa polls, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the darling of libertarians.

Both these candidates are outside the broad political mainstream. During the recent debt-ceiling fiasco, Bachmann was among the House members who pledged not to raise the government's borrowing limit under any circumstances. Paul shared this position, and he has views on banking and monetary policy best described as pre-industrial. Both are long shots to win the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency.

And yet the Iowa Republican Party has devised an event that seems almost perfectly suited to showcasing their doctrinaire views. Is that good for the GOP? Or for the USA?