Iowa’s caucuses are tonight, marking the “official” beginning of the Presidential nomination campaigns which began a year ago. While it may be difficult to get a meaningful result tonight – the Republicans hold a beauty contest only, and the Democrats’ rules are so involved it may take a day or more to sort out who really won the most delegates – you can bet every candidate will have people before the media explaining how the result was exactly what they expected/needed.
Putting the proper “spin” on the results is a relatively new phenomenon – 25 years ago losing candidates usually merely conceded (George H.W. Bush may have made the first attempt at spin when he lost New Hampshire to Reagan after winning “big Mo” in Iowa, by claiming “little Mo”) – but it doesn’t really fool anyone. In fact, the spin each candidate will give every possible result can be easily predicted, and NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd has done just that.
His predictions sound close enough to me. Read them all and refer to them as the results crawl across the bottom of the TV screen as you watch Kansas and Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl. Let’s hope the game is as hotly contested as Iowa has been this year . . .
