The Press's Post-Iowa Tailwinds: As Nature Intended It?

But the way the media frame the narrative is crucial. In 1984, Germond notes, Walter Mondale was leading Gary Hart in New Hampshire, 32 to 8 percent. But after Hart was lauded for doing "better than expected" in Iowa -- expected by the media, that is -- despite winning just 16.5 percent to Mondale's 49 percent, the bounce helped catapult him to victory in New Hampshire.

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There are more media outlets these days than ever before, with untold thousands of political Web sites, and newspapers and magazines constantly updating their blogs. So the slingshot effect of an Iowa victory could be even greater.

Iowa and New Hampshire, while whiter and more rural than the rest of the country, still serve an important function. As reporters invariably observe at town meetings, residents take their first-in-the-nation duties seriously, forcing the candidates to engage in retail politics before the mega-states turn the campaign into a television-driven blur. Iowa also gives hope to a long-shot candidate such as Mike Huckabee, who has edged into second place there, much as Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to win in 1976. With so many big states moving up their primaries early next year, Iowa and New Hampshire were supposed to recede in importance, but it's not at all clear that will happen.

With its arcane caucus rules, Iowa remains a small battlefield. Only 124,000 Democrats voted last time, less than a quarter of those eligible. So if Barack Obama, say, edges Hillary Clinton by 2,000 votes, he'll be hailed in headlines as a giant-killer despite the tiny margin.

It's echo-chamber journalism that turns Iowa into a make-or-break contest for so many candidates. And the deafening noise may once again short-circuit the process.

Trash Talking

The equivalent of a street brawl has broken out on the New York Times op-ed page.

The fisticuffs began when liberal columnist Bob Herbert wrote that Ronald Reagan -- by kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights activists had been shot to death 16 years earlier -- was "there to assure the bigots that he was with them."

That column drew a strong rebuke from conservative David Brooks, who said the "slur" and "distortion" about Reagan was being "spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn't even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence."

Herbert punched back, writing that "Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it." And columnist Paul Krugman rushed to Herbert's side last week, writing that while Reagan may not have been personally bigoted, he "tried to benefit from racial polarization."

Quite a dustup over a single event that took place 27 years ago. And the acrimony spread last week to The Washington Post's op-ed page, where columnist Ruth Marcus wrote a "Krugman vs. Krugman" piece charging that the Princeton economist had changed his stance on Social Security. That arguably amounted to self-defense, coming days after Krugman dismissed a Post editorial on the subject -- written by Marcus -- as "nonsense."

Media Morsels

¿ In a move that has revived charges of liberal media bias, former ABC anchor Carole Simpson has endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Simpson, now a journalism instructor at Emerson College, offered her resignation the day after announcing her support at an event featuring the New York senator, but it was turned down.