My Strange Love for the Straw Poll

I've learned to quit worrying and love the Iowa Republican Straw Poll.

Oh, make no mistake, it's a porta potty-ringed shamocracy with a country music soundtrack. It's an overhyped, sunburned, vote-buying fest turned, somehow, into a moment of national significance by cash-grabbing state GOP'ers and political journos desperate for a scribble-ready spectacle.

Real candidates will pin their lofty ambitions to fake ballots. Tim Pawlenty, for instance, was the powerful governor of a sovereign state, for two terms no less. Now, his presidential dreams rest on convincing thousands of people to come to Ames on Saturday to elect him king of a barbecue. Instead, he'll probably have to stand there, dumbfounded, and take questions about dropping out of the race after Ron Paul (Ron Paul!) wins.

It seems so wrong. But it feels so right. Gorging on empty, guilty calories in August is an Iowa tradition. See the State Fair.

Not everyone agrees, however.

“The Iowa Straw Poll is one of the most insidious events in politics,” Walter Shapiro wrote in the New Republic this week.

OK, OK, now, let's get a grip.

The poll and adjacent circus are an easy target for tutt-tutting by very serious people. But if you think hard, is the straw poll really the most ridiculous way we judge or test presidential timber in this country? Would it even make the top 10?

This event will draw thousands of Iowa Republicans, most of whom will caucus in February. So, as polls go, this would seem to beat the media polls and campaign polls and daily tracking polls of a few hundred souls that are routinely given weight far beyond reason. The campaign is cheapened and distorted by those polls daily. The Straw Poll is just one day.

It's better than the “which candidate would you rather have a beer with?” test. It's probably superior to the great wind surfing versus brush clearing debate that once gripped America. It might even top the truly crucial debate over who has the most followers on Twitter.

Oh, and which pledge have you signed? Was it the marry, vow, cap, balance and tuck? Or the ban, slap, slice, protect and drill?

I guess there's always the test of which hopeful has the biggest pile of cash. Or maybe it's who has raised the most “Super PAC” dollars donated by corporations that existed for three months or less. That's now key.

Bucks determine who is winning the “air war” with TV ad buys. Nothing fake or insidious about those 30-second gems. Or we can tune into all the critical “debates,” which never fail to enlighten voters as to who can best stand on both feet, memorize talking points and deliver prepackaged zingers at appropriate moments.

So on the road to the White House, Ames is hardly the most outrageous detour. But it is the only one with Rick Santorum's

peach jam,

Randy Travis singing and something called a

Thaddeus McCotter. I can't wait.