Today in alleged news: The New York Times reports that Iowa and New Hampshire have disproportionate power* in determining who will lead the United States. And their bigfoot status is of a piece with the anti-urban bias (the US Senate is an even more glaring example) of American politics:
Above all, Iowa and New Hampshire lack a single big city, at a time when large metropolitan areas are crucial to lifting economic growth. Big metro areas are where big ideas most often take shape and great new companies are most often born. The country’s 25 largest areas are responsible for 52 percent of the country’s economic output, according to the Brookings Institution, and are home to 42 percent of the population.
Yet metro areas are also struggling with major problems. The quality of schools is spotty. Commutes last longer than ever. Roads, bridges, tunnels and transit systems are aging.
You don’t hear much about these issues in the first year of a presidential campaign, though.
The big picture quote in the piece is from the Brooking Institute's Bruce Katz, who says, “The United States stands apart as an anti-urban nation in an urbanizing world." He unfavorably compares us to China, where urban planning is at the core of economic strategy.
*Update: Jonathan Bernstein makes a valid point, that Iowa and New Hampshire have become less important than non-state-specific "support from party actors." That may have something to do with how many potential 2012 GOP candidates have dropped out long before Iowa. But I disagree with Bernstein (see his comments section) that the the dynamics of the general election give more weight to urban issues.
Not coincidentally, the Phoenix's David Bernstein today gives a big "CAUCUS PANDER WIN" to long-shot Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer, who promises to hold his inaugural balls in Iowa rather than in Washington, DC. Presumably, this would show the world how little we care about our job-generating, immigrant-attracting big cities. We could show China that our political elites are keeping a laser-like focus on the aging, population-losing, obsolete-industries backbone of our great nation!
Matt Yglesias suggests moving the first primary from New Hampshire to Massachusetts so that "we’d probably see candidates saying something about traffic jams, mass transit, regional planning, etc. instead of all farms all the time," but this has to be mostly for the joke of forcing GOP candidates to compete in the most educated state in the US. Yglesias says that he doesn't want to get too far from the small size of New Hampshire that supposedly helps little-known candidates. By that logic, we could move the first primary to Washington, DC, except that it has far too many... federal employees for the Republican Party's liking.
So why not shrink the New Hampshire primary to just Nashua, whose size (86,000) is reasonably close to the population median? (That is, a bit more than half of all Americans live in cities bigger than Nashua and almost half live in places that are smaller.) Or Portland, Maine, which is a bit smaller but slightly more diverse and, frankly, a lot more interesting?
It won't happen, of course, because of our national romance with little bitty towns where nothing happens. Speaking of which, I've been asked to post more Andy Griffith Show clips, so below is what is probably the best episode of the series, a Twilight Zone-ish tale of a "Man in a Hurry" to the big city of Charlotte who is trapped in Mayberry on a Sunday afternoon. (I think Mayberry is actually the afterlife here and he'll never escape.) Seriously, it's a beautifully written and produced episode, but I'd love to find an urban equivalent.
That was the episode where Opie was going to get to sleep on the ironboard between two chairs. That is what he called adventure sleeping. And Barney was going to go home take a nap go over to Thelma Lou's a watch a little TV.
Posted by: Allan Fitzmaurice | June 04, 2011 at 03:58 AM