IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO BE TOO EARLY

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on anything Iowa-related, but I’ve long thought that the Iowa caucuses were a complete farce. The only thing they’re really good for is taking a fat wad of coastal-elite money and redistributing it among various small upper-Midwestern media markets.

With that in mind, it’s nice to know that the Des Moines Register takes the time to print up a schedule of where you can meet the candidates today. Since there are only ten short months to make a decision before it’s time to vote for the people who will vote for the people who will vote for the people who will vote for a candidate who will probably be out of the running by the time the convention rolls around, you can hardly miss an opportunity to ask a question, since you’ll only have seventeen or eighteen more between now and then.

In that spirit, here are ten possible ways Iowans who want to subvert the process can mess with the candidates’ heads.

1. Ask as many questions about E85 as possible. Might as well propagate the myth that Iowa is nothing but cornfields, right?
2. Give every candidate your resume and ask to named Ambassador to Gabookistan, or Secretary of Ordering Things From the Deli.
3. Sidle up to a candidate and say that four years ago, the hosts at your precinct caucus tried to pass off catfish bait as paté. Insist that you’re going Green (or Libertarian) if you can’t see the hors d’oeuvre menu before the caucuses. Watch the fear on the face of the intern assigned to investigate this pressing matter.
4. Pass a note to a staffer mentioning that you just saw Dan Savage touching the doorknobs at their campaign headquarters.
5. Carry a sign forcefully advocating immigration amnesty for Klingons and Ferengis.
6. With a straight face, insist on significantly tighter immigration policies and a solution to the problem of rural depopulation.
7. Poll the candidates on whether they can, as yet, tell the difference between cow manure and pig manure strictly by smell.
8. Make up business cards identifying yourself as the head of the Iowa Belgian Endive Growers Association and complain loudly that presidential candidates never address the concerns of your organization.
9. At an open forum, loudly denounce school consolidation as a terrorist plot designed to create larger targets. Demand that every town with a population greater than 200 has a right to its own fully independent K-12 school system. Insist that this can be done without raising taxes.
10. Circulate a petition at all campaign rallies asking for Charles Nelson Reilly’s head to be added to Mount Rushmore.