It's amazing! It's incredible! TV analysts gush over Iowa

If there was kinetic joy in the camps of Iowa caucus victors Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee last night, it was nothing compared to the hyperbole-burbling, earnest elbow-leaning glee of the political commentators. For one brief and electronically shining moment, the folks at CNN, MSNBC and even Fox News found common ground -- an Upset in Iowa, with the long-predicted favorites taking it on the chin. (Hillary Rodham Clinton came in third!)

Never mind that the people who had been using their best authoritative baritones to call Republican Mitt Romney and Democratic Sen. Clinton the favorites all these weeks were the same people now taking such obvious pleasure in their downfall -- the 350,000 or so souls who voted in the caucus have turned the 2008 presidential campaign into a genuine horse race. And who doesn't love a horse race?

Depending on whom you were watching -- and really it didn't matter because they all blurred together in one big (mostly male) rally of wonder and amazement -- it was unprecedented, revolutionary, a watershed in American politics. One commentator, apparently jacked up on too many viewings of "It's a Wonderful Life," compared former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee to Jimmy Stewart, while over at MSNBC, Chris Matthews was conducting an experiment to establish if it was possible to explode with political metaphor. Iowa was Lexington and Concord, William McKinley versus William Jennings Bryan, Coke versus Pepsi. OK, not the last, but you get the picture.

It was a culmination of a growing air of almost childlike excitement among political reporters and pundits, a group not normally known for their giddiness. Crankiness, yes; giddiness, not so much. For those covering politics, this year's primary race really does look like a big shiny present from whatever deity and/or holiday figure one happens to acknowledge. Just look at the candidates -- the Democrats' front-runners are a black man, a former first lady and a handsome senator whose wife is bravely battling cancer, while the Republicans, who invented the boring rich WASP template, have a Mormon, a former Baptist preacher who plays the guitar, and Sen. John McCain, who is many things but never boring.

You really have to wonder if the casting directors over at Showtime were involved. I mean, how surprised will we be when Mary-Louise Parker throws her hat in the ring for v.p.? A single mom! There's a long-overlooked demographic.