Alex Massie

No more than 10% of Iowans registered as either Republicans or Democrats are likely to turn out for Thursday's caucuses. So The American Spectator's Philip Klein is quite right to call foul: DES MOINES -- Every four years, politicians and the media swarm this small Midwestern state and shower its voters with attention and compliments, but very few people have the courage to admit the simple truth: Iowans are largely apathetic about politics, and they don't deserve the disproportionate influence they have in choosing the leader of the free world. If Iowans are to retain their privileged position* at the front end of the Presidential primary and caucus process, would it be too much to actually ask them to, like, vote?

In my sourer moments I find myself persuaded that Bertie Wooster's verdict on aunts also applies to politicians: "It is no use telling me that there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof." Never is this more the case than during a Presidential campaign. The sheer ghastliness of the front-runners is something to behold. Or not, as the case may be. Try as I might, for instance, I find it hard to warm to Hillary Clinton even as I acknowledge that some of the hysteria surrounding her is absurdly overblown. And yet, there's something to it too.

I have already mentioned my suspicion that few PG Wodehouse fans are likely to endorse Hillary Clinton. It is unhealthy for a Presidential candidate to remind one of Honoria Glossop or Florence Craye so. Miss Glossop, you will remember, always wanted to mold a chap, "I think" she said "I shall be able to make something of you, Bertie. It is true yours has been a wasted life up to the present, but you are still young, and there is a lot of good in you...It simply wants bringing out." And it seems that Mrs Clinton is of similar mind. As she said in a speech in Austin in 1993: "Let us be willing to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being." A Gawd-help-us moment if ever there was one.

Hurrah! In addition to her blogging at Hit & Run the estimable Kerry Howley now has a blog of her own too. Which reminds me that I've been meaning to suggest you also scurry over to Will Wilkinson's longer-established place too. Lots of good stuff on immigration an guest workers at both blogs with, I imagine, even more goodies to come...

Via Andrew, here's Huckabee on Benazir Bhutto's murder: "We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there's any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very, very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally because, again, we live in a very, very dangerous time," Huckabee said during a news conference Thursday night in West Des Moines. Over Christmas lunch a friend warned me not to be quite so dismissive of Huckabee. He's not just a hick I was told. And perhaps he isn't: this answer cannily ties security (whatever that is) to immigration after all, shoring up Huckabee's weakness on that front.

Sad news. Hugh Massingberd, the man who did more to bring obituaries to life than anyone else, is dead. He qualifies as one of the great journalists of our age. My poor, old (not so old actually) and now dead Uncle David was one of his contributors and I recall answering the phone, aged 12 or so, during one of David's rather extended stays at my parents' house, to hear Mr Massingberd asking, politely, how the obituary of this or that not-yet-dead restaurateur*, wine merchant or horse trainer was progressing. "Fitfully" was the answer one learned to give, David being  incommunicado... And now the begetter is gone too. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that. Just 60 too. Young.