As I watched the CBS News last night, one of its senior political reporters made two points, virtually back to back, and never connected the dots between them.

The reporter noted that the public hadn’t paid much attention to the Iowa caucuses before 1976, when Jimmy Carter’s strong showing suddenly put him on the national political map; and he further noted that ever since, the results of the caucuses have become a reliable indicator of who will be the eventual nominee from each party.

Hello? Anybody home? Change the word “public” in the sentence above to “media,” and you can’t miss the obvious connection: Iowa’s importance in the political process is a phenomenon created, and nurtured, by journalists. They have helped turn a silly popularity contest that has all the sophistication of a high school Queen of Hearts selection (”OK, everybody who likes John Edwards go stand in that corner!”) into an event so important that the presidential field can easily be cut in half by the caucus results. So, yeah, when the system becomes that front-loaded, of course the survivors usually go on to become the nominee. Duh. (As usual, Christopher Hitchens can be relied upon to give us a wonderfully surly fulmination on this topic.)

Don’t believe the caucuses are a media creation? It turns out that the overwhelming majority of Iowans themselves don’t even bother to participate. As the Los Angeles Times reported a couple of days ago:

… at least 1.7 million of some 2 million eligible Iowa voters will sit out Thursday’s caucuses. As usual, they will leave the decision to a contingent of political activists who are mostly older, whiter and more highly educated than the rest of the nation.

In other words, the media-driven event that immediately sidelines an impressive number of candidates every election year actually consists of a relative handful of people from one narrow slice of the demographic pie. This is democracy?

At least one article I read earlier this week was clear-eyed about assigning blame for the absurd importance now given to Iowa. A tip of the hat to the Associated Press for this piece, which said in part:

Start with the media.

First, they descend on Iowa like locusts. Often there are so many TV cameras around a top-tier candidate they become like a wall dividing politician from voter.

“In their attempt to cover a story, the various news media create an overwhelming presence and obstacle,” concludes a new exhibit on the caucuses at the Iowa State Museum.

Second, the media pronounce instant winners and losers — even though Iowa’s caucuses are just the first step in picking delegates who’ll vote for a nominee the following summer — and Iowa’s delegates represent less than 3 percent of those needed to win either nomination. …

“Reporters love to moan about Iowa’s role,” said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines. “But it’s you guys who made Iowa. There’s a co-dependency between the candidates and the media.”

Preach it, brother. Everyone who thinks that journalists ought to dramatically dial back their coverage of the Iowa caucuses go stand in that corner.

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