How to separate the contenders from the pretenders

By the time you read this, Iowa and New Hampshire will have made their selections in the longest and perhaps the most tiresome of all presidential primary chases. Beginning with several of the states’ adolescent jockeying for positions in “me first” efforts to change the timing of primaries to the specter of too many candidates promising unrealistic solutions to every real or contrived problem along with the usual glut of mudslinging, it is difficult to fault those who have already tuned it out.