KEY POINTS:
Iowa could be us, by the sound of it: just a few million people, few enough for all of them to realise their opinion matters and their vote counts.
Many of them are farmers, possessing that wisdom that comes from long hours on a tractor with time to
think, and the need to trust your instincts sometimes rather than conventional wisdom and expert forecasts.
You meet them in Southland, Westland, Waikato. They are not easily swayed by clever campaigns on television and distrust politicians who seem too willing to tell them what they want to hear.
They are conservative only in so far as they are not faddish. They have to be open to change when they sense its promise is genuine. They are used to sifting wheat from chaff.
They like to assess people face to face and in Iowa they even vote publicly for the Democrat Party's presidential nominee. Dispensing with a secret ballot, they stand up for their preferred candidate in a precinct hall.
Those who find themselves standing in a group of fewer than 15 per cent of the audience get a chance to move to the group of one of the more popular candidates. The elimination continues until the precinct has chosen the candidate(s) whose delegate(s) will carry its votes to larger conventions.
The Republican Party's procedure is simpler. A straw poll is taken on paper and there is no transferable vote.
In the United States any eligible voter can have a say in a party's selection without actually joining the party. They simply tick the Republican or Democrat box when they register as an elector. Some states have "open primaries" where even neutrally registered voters can take part in the selection of a candidate for one party or the other.
The Iowa "caucuses" are only one step out of the era when candidates were chosen by shadowy negotiations in party backrooms rather than the primary elections generally adopted since the 1960s, but I like the Iowa compromise.
I like the effort required to attend a meeting rather than drop into a voting station, and I like the public declaration.
Decisions are best made by people with an interest in the subject, who take the trouble to study it and can stand up for their conclusions. What is the harm in restricting the decision to those who care enough to go out on a wintry Iowa night rather than stay in to watch Kansas University play Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl?
But the best thing about Iowa, and New Hampshire which holds the next primary on Tuesday, is their intimacy.
The populations are small enough for many to have observed the contenders in person. It's easier to have faith in their selections than in big states where none but a tiny fraction of voters will have seen a candidate live or heard one speak more than a sentence in a news bite.
All too soon now, the contest moves to simultaneous primaries in too many states to cover as closely. And all too happily the leading contenders will revert to the mediated campaigns their consultants have planned.
These give them carefully managed appearances before tame audiences, contrived photo calls, well-crafted advertising spots on television in crucial states, slick mailouts and web postings, phone polls, daily puff for the press and agile comment by hired stand-ins for the candidate when anything contentious comes up.
All of this costs millions. It is why American federal legislators spend half their waking time raising money. It is the nightmare behind the Labour Party's new election finance legislation, but this country is Iowa, not an electorate of 200 million.
Seldom has the choice Americans will make seemed as important as it does this year. Eight years ago, when they elected a likeable bloke who plainly knew nothing about the world they could be forgiven.
Just about everything was right with the world, the Cold War won, economies booming, democracy breaking out on every continent, even Arabs and Israelis had been talking.
Four years on he had started a war he could not win and was re-elected on a manipulative appeal to patriotism.
Now Americans need to elect competence, exceptional competence, not just to extract themselves from Iraq with responsibility for what then happens there, but for picking up their economy, giving leadership on global warming and nuclear containment, and mollifying Islamic nationalism by getting serious about Israel.
Many elections come down to a choice between likeability and competence. Every voter would like both. Among Republican candidates this year, Huckerbee seems the most likeable, McCain and Giuliani have proven competence.
Giuliani extremely so, as attested by New York City today.
On the Democrat side, Obama is charming, Edwards is campaigning on irresponsible populism, Clinton is competence.
But for the moment Iowa knows them best.
