Burlington, Iowa: I am here in this quiet, clean and friendly Midwestern city to visit with my eldest daughter and her family and learn a little bit more about the famous Iowa primary, which for now forty years or so has provided the earliest indication of who would be nominated as the official presidential candidates in the national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Americans I have spoken to on this trip seem to have the same problems as Filipinos at home. They need all the help they can get in finding candidates to support in the 2016 elections. There seems to be a lack of material for national leadership everywhere. This is not helped by having all the candidates self-nominated without a screening process. Here, the primary precludes the possibility of 130 candidates filing for the presidency, but this is not to suggest it has eliminated all its problems.

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