Produced by Iowa.(on the right)

NEW YORK, JANUARY 4

IT'S wonderful what a mere American presidential caucus contest can do. Gov. Bill Richardson, interviewed after the Iowa caucuses, said that his ranking in the vote must be understood in the light of the parsimony of his campaign. "I didn't come here, like some of my brothers, just loaded with cash." What did he come loaded with? Enough appeal to entice the caucus voters to give him 53 delegates to the Iowa state convention.

Was he the last in line? No no, do not take that away from Christopher Dodd. He likes to point out his disposition to embrace lost causes. Well, his lost cause in Iowa amounted to a hair over 0 percent of the vote, amounting to one delegate.

And it didn't require neglect by the press to effect alienation from the voters. Rudy Giuliani showed up with a burning city on his back, a single fire hose in his hand. He did better than Richardson, gaining 3.5 percent of Republican votes, as opposed to Richardson's 2.1 percent of Democratic votes. But, as someone remarked, he shouldn't be lonely, he has all those wives to return to.

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Above the ranks of sheer rejection came the players, among them Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Their principal attraction, to the voters of Iowa in 2008, is their insubstantiality. Huckabee is the candidate whose name you practice pronouncing because you thought up until now that he was a character in one of Mark Twain's novels. Some voters may have suspected that that is exactly what he in fact is, and wished to help in his road to incarnation.

But there was real poignancy in the middle group. John McCain made it to 13 percent, but that is losers' territory, and he might have preferred to come in with his senatorial colleague Mr. Dodd. If there was sadness in Iowa when the votes were counted, much of it must have been over the ...