Iowa and New Hampshire seem to have shattered a few prevailing myths, some of which I have long supported:

“The primaries are too early, the campaign is too long”:  Voters didn’t seem to care, even as an endless stream of columnists decried the endless campaign.  Obama, and to a lesser extent, McCain and Huckabee have done more to encourage civic participation than any motor voter bill or short campaign schedule.

“Iowa is irrelevant and unrepresentative”:  Iowa — again! — has been an opening shot across the bow of the the other states, forcing them to react. Iowa never guarantees a long-term winner, but as Rudy Giuliani has learned, you ignore it at your peril.  Yes, it is full of old codgers and home schoolers. But, like New Hampshire, it makes retail politics a part of the presidential primary process.  Putting any other combination of states earlier in the process hands over the entire system to a television ad war.

You can’t beat high name ID:  On the Republican side, the first candidates to have universal name identification with voters have always won: Reagan in 1980, Bush in 1988, Dole in 1996, Bush in 2000. This time around, Rudy Giuliani had 100% name ID from the gitgo. It didn’t help.