Karen Heller: Iowa's caucuses: A great spectacle in a tiny, tiny state

I love Iowa. One of my favorite stories was on the Donna Reed Festival years ago in tiny Denison (7,000 and change), a town that willed its economic success. As an investigative gastronome, I downed corn dogs and fried Snickers at the Iowa State Fair, America's prototypical agrarian exposition, home of the only known version of The Last Supper made entirely out of butter.

I joined the swarm of reporters descending on Iowa for its first-in-the-nation caucus. Not to brag, but the most expensive plane trip I ever took was from Des Moines to Manchester, N.H., $1,700 and only one way! It was the lone time I saw Bill Bradley, he of the golden resumé, drop his guard, a wonderful moment that his staff later ruled off the record though it humanized his wooden campaign style, which makes Mitt Romney seem Clintonian.

So, I love Iowa but think it's needy and greedy. Hours before Tuesday's caucus, one voter said she refused to decide until she shook hands with all her top candidates and looked them squarely in the eye. Good luck with that!

At many events this year, reporters outnumbered voters. Rick Santorum, whose sweater vests merited a separate beat, attended 381(!) town hall meetings to come in eight votes short of Romney, who spent $4 million, or roughly $133 per vote.

This is what "winning" has come to: spending too much time or too much money on too few votes in a too-small state - one with 1 percent of the nation's residents.

Despite the nonstop love from the candidates, only one in five Iowa Republicans bothered voting. That's less than 6 percent of the state's overwhelmingly white electorate in a nation that has become increasingly diverse.

So on to New Hampshire, a smaller, whiter shade of pale!

This game has become an entertaining, expensive, over-analyzed, extended reality show with dizzying graphics, techno toys, and playoff analysis that puts sports broadcasting to shame. CNN has welcomed more analysts than there were apostles present at the last supper, and to a far smaller table.

On NBC Tuesday night, Brian Williams said, "This is a real barn burner." Really? Eight votes in tiny Iowa?

The breathless coverage - which I've admittedly devoured - is invariably who's up and who's down, a political version of Whac-a-Mole. Stories dwell on gaffes, bad blood, spouses, dogs, number of children, number of wives, hair, attire.