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Iowa's January caucuses finally arrive for a face-weary electorate.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

The Iowa caucuses are in earshot, so naturally one's thoughts turn to fairy tales. Joy comes from entering the fairy-tale world only if one chooses to believe. Oz worked only so long as the locals believed the Wizard was real. Which means we're in Iowa now, with Huck, Hillary, Obama, Oprah, Rudy, Mitt and all the political dreams that money and muscle can muster.

Three weeks from today, Jan. 3, while you're watching the FedEx Orange Bowl between Kansas and Virginia Tech, Iowa's most politicized citizens will caucus and vote. When they're done, we'll know whether Mike Huckabee really has become the Wizard of Iowa.

As we all know too well, it's been a long, hard slog. During Mitt Romney's visit to the Journal's offices last month, he told us, with pride, that he'd done 462 events in Iowa and New Hampshire this year. More than a few eyes widened at the thought. Last weekend even Hillary's mom campaigned for her in Iowa, and Oprah was somewhere else in the state for Barack. A few days ago, Bill Clinton was in Ames, where he said that years ago he told Hillary to dump him so she could run for office. "I thought it would be wrong for me to rob her of the chance to be what I thought she should be," the former president said. "She laughed and said, 'First, I love you and, second, I'm not going to run for anything, I'm too hardheaded.' "

You have to ask yourself: No matter how many times Iowans have been down this path, what can they make of it all? What can anyone make of it?

Iowa matters. After nigh a year of magic bus tours through the state by the presidentially ambitious and after the Jan. 3 caucuses finish the most arcane voting game on the planet, two people will have won Iowa and most of the rest will be gagging down their losses. If Huck beats Mitt, Mitt's campaign is an empty husk. If Barack comes a close second to Hillary's dream team (this first-name game will be elaborated on in a moment), then he'll have the Iowa caucus's famous second-fiddle momentum, which carried Iowa second-place finishers George McGovern to the party nomination in 1972 and Jimmy Carter in 1976.

If you were an Iowan, what would be the basis for your vote that frosty night? Would you vote the man, gender, pigment or an issue? Nonstop across nearly the whole of 2007, the candidates and our ever-malleable political "system" have thrown all of these at the American electorate, hoping some of it will stick. For most of the year, Barack Obama has tried to prevent the inevitable Hillary ascension by running as a reasonable, intelligent young man. With the clock running down, Team Obama decided to throw Oprah the length of the field. Who knows, it might work.

Gallup a few days ago reported what its polls say are on people's mind. The war in Iraq remains No. 1, at 36%, with the interest level then dropping by half to 16% for the economy. Immigration, the great GOP catfight, is said to be at only 10% for the general population. A Washington Post poll yesterday put the economy at 44%, the war at 37% and, oh yes, immigration, at 10%.

There is a plausible school of thought in our politics which says that most voters wait until the final week to look out the window, discern what strikes them as important, check out the candidates, press the two pieces--issues and candidates--against the template of their own beliefs, and vote.

This is probably as good a way as any to run a democracy. But politics risks turning to glue if the voters' moment of decision is preceded by nearly 100 weeks of constant campaigning. Like wary Olympic cyclists pedaling side by side around the velodrome, these front-runners aren't going to get out in front of the pack with a strong theme or issue. With a race this long, the whole world could change. Ask the Democrats. They thought they'd ride into the White House aboard one issue--national disaffection over Iraq. That's not going to happen. Now what?

Afraid that a turn in the economy, a terrorist bomb or an October (2008) surprise will turn a commitment way back when into an embarrassment 14 months later, most of the candidates are running campaigns more or less about nothing. Hillary Clinton is especially famous for having no set opinion about anything, other than that it's all George Bush's fault. There was palpable excitement as Fred Thompson's candidacy rumbled down the runway. But now that he's aloft, few can make out what he's about, other than joining most of the other Republican candidates to pistol-whip the Mexicans occasionally. Rudy Giuliani published a piece in The Wall Street Journal Dec. 3, "The Meaning of Fiscal Conservatism," a correct, but careful, tour d'horizon. As an astute friend described the piece, "It was without a galvanizing theme, to put it kindly." The Huckabee Fair Tax and the Thompson voluntary flat tax are more punch-list talking points than a defining, core commitment.

With the issues seen by these long campaigns as mercurial or dangerous, what does one run on for a year, or two years?

Yourself.

In an age in which media and marketing sell everything else as celebrity or self, there is logic in reducing one's campaign to biography. Nearly all these candidates want to be on a first-name basis with the nation. The Washington Post currently has a series running each day on the candidates in which one of the articles is done by the paper's fashion writer ("How He Looks"). Why not? It's a perfect fit for the shape of our politics now.

Voters will play the hand they've been dealt, and at last with Iowa the big moment has arrived. We should all be pumped. But the press reports disinterest and waning enthusiasm for the candidates. Before a single vote is cast, much of the electorate is experiencing issues fatigue and face fatigue. Hillary most of all didn't need this much face time with the voters. No one does.

Let's not do this two-year run again. Here's how: Dump the federal campaign-finance law, which forces candidates to raise millions in $2,300 dribs and drabs. That is why they've been running since last winter. The campaign isn't about us. It's designed as a sales pitch. It's about their fund-raising imperative. The result: Mike Huckabee may win Iowa in large part because he gives people a good laugh.

Not funny.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Thursdays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.