Frum argued that the current campaign-finance laws have changed the way people campaign. It's like filling a bathtub with a tablespoon. Once upon a time the machinery of the two great political parties sorted through the potential candidates. But that machinery rusted away long ago. All that remains is the candidates themselves, a hundred million voters unwilling to contribute very much more to the political process than their ballot on Election Day, and, interceding between them, some tens of thousands of donors, party activists, political professionals, and journalists.
Few citizens are likely to have much firsthand experience of either politicians or the news media.
However, in the small states with early caucuses or primaries, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, personal contact between the two Americas is possible for a considerable proportion of the voters. The encounters I saw in these states fairly crackled with tension. To begin with, at almost every campaign stop there appeared a beast that rarely failed to astonish the uninitiated citizen. At many events this ungainly clump outnumbered the citizenry, who sometimes had a hard time getting anywhere near the candidate. It is tempting to see the shifts of the nineties as a speeded-up version of a normal seesawing between right and left.