The First Votes Are Cast

There are times when the rest of the world fixates too easily on internal American politics. But 2008 is not such a time. For the election this year is without question a watershed for the world's most powerful nation. Domestically, Americans face historic problems - health care, immigration, the credit crunch and the federal deficit among them. Internationally, the world continues to be confronted by climate change, nuclear proliferation, and Islamist terrorism - none of which can be tackled without the United States being prepared to cooperate seriously with others on the world stage.

For the past seven years, these issues have been made more difficult by the dogmatic, arrogant and often catastrophic approach of George Bush. He has presided over the worst US administration in modern times - possibly the worst in the republic's history. The choice of his successor on November 4 will decide whether his disastrous mode of American leadership continues as a festering fact of global political life. This is no year for a romantic loser.

Today, for the first time, real Americans cast real votes in the process. But they will not be typical. The citizens of rural Iowa live in small communities with few strangers. They are overwhelmingly white, protestant, and have a history of dovish voting on international issues. Tonight, 200,000 of them - almost certainly the highest turnout ever - will head out in sub-zero temperatures to caucus meetings.

No one devising a new system would give such a prominence to the Iowa caucuses, or to next week's primary in New Hampshire - another untypical state. This year their eccentric eminence was challenged by other states compressing their own electoral calendars. But that only encouraged Iowa and New Hampshire to hold their contests even earlier, campaigning started in summer and is being completed in the holiday season. All this means the 2008 nominations will be all but settled after the "Super Tuesday" primaries on February 5. Then the grim nine-month battle for the White House between the two survivors begins.

Yet this crazy system has merits. Iowans take their duties seriously. In a system otherwise in thrall to big donors and negative advertising, they get a chance to meet, test and sometimes make or break candidates. Iowa does not always settle things. Who now remembers Dick Gephardt's win here in the Democratic contest of 1988, or Tom Harkin's in 1992? Yet who can forget how it killed Howard Dean's campaign in 2004? Today's voting may be more decisive for losers, who will begin to fall by the wayside, than for frontrunners, for whom there will be other days. But this is decision time in a contest whose outcome could hardly matter more.