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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.

The media horde is about to descend about the Granite State like ants at a picnic. Unfortunately, the stakes remain pretty high, because perception is reality. If Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney don't win New Hampshire, their campaigns are in big trouble because it will appear to the media that more losses are to come. The reverse is true if MIke Huckabee and Barack Obama repeat their victories in New Hampshire.

This is nuts.

The media yet again will anoint winners and losers before 99% of the electorate has even voted. This is no way to pick someone to run a moose lodge, let alone president of the United States. I realize that my pleas will yet again fall on deaf ears, so let's talk the most annoying media trend of the election: crawl growth.

Crawls are the endless loop of news that flashes across the bottom and sometimes the sides of the screens on cable TV networks. Last night, CNN's Wolf Blitzer promised even more crawl information for high-depth viewers as a bonus. I changed the channel to MSNBC and didn't look back, though I did pop in on Fox News from time to time. MSNBC scored big by keeping its screen simple.