Should newspapers be next for government bailouts?

Philadelphia Newspaper Holdings L.L.C., owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, is looking for a bailout from the state of Pennsylvania. The paper, for which I have done freelance work for in the past, has like other major metropolitan dailies struggled for years with declining advertising and circulation. It has been trimming staff with a vengeance but it has done little good.

In describing the results of last night's Iowa caucuses, The Washington Post's David Broder minced no words: "Eight years after Iowa voters did the conventional -- sending George W. Bush and Al Gore on to meet in the election of 2000, they shook up the status quo in both parties as never before. The victories of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee jolted the expectations of establishment candidates with far stronger conventional credentials."

The New York Times' David Brooks was similarly thunderstruck. "I've been through election nights that brought a political earthquake to the country. I've never been through an election night that brought two."

While I admit the results were exciting, there is something that people often forget that the Philadelphia Inquirer's Dick Polman argues they need to remember: "Incumbents aside, exactly one victorious Iowa candidate -- George W. Bush in 2000 -- has ever gone on to win the presidency in the same year. Even though (Jimmy) Carter got an historic boost in Iowa, on the way to his November election, he actually finished second in Iowa -- behind 'Uncommitted.'"

Oh, so all of the hot air that's been expounded in the past 24 hours over this antiquated political system is that one of the least representative states in the country may not actually mean much in the long term. That's unbelievable, but what's worse is that we are about to go through this whole exercise yet again in an equally non-representative state, New Hampshire.