The Globe in Iowa: U.S. spectacle illustrates Canada's 'meh' political scene

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As he wraps up his performance and walks off the stage, the celebrity is mobbed by adoring fans. They clamour for his autograph, for selfies, to share even a fleeting moment with the object of their adulation.

"Feel this – I just touched him!" says one young woman emerging from the throng, proffering her hand to a young man who clasps it tight.

"I am never washing my hands again!" her friend exclaims.

Who is the star who has packed the room to the rafters on a midwinter Saturday, the audience spilling out onto the sidewalk?

Harry Styles? Shawn Mendes? The Biebs? Try Ted Cruz.

If it's surreal to see a rapturous crowd, including a good many fresh-faced millennials, going gaga over a balding, middle-aged senator, it's actually not all that out of place in the campaign for the U.S. presidency.

Donald Trump gets similarly delirious receptions on the campaign trail. So do Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

In Canada, you can count on one hand the politicians who get this kind of celebrity attention. Justin Trudeau and Rob Ford are the only two who immediately come to mind.

During the past two weeks, as I crisscrossed Iowa ahead of the caucuses, I often thought back to the last election I covered, Ontario's 2014 vote. If you looked around at any given rally on that campaign, you would quickly notice the high percentage of the crowd that was made up of paid political staffers, party apparatchiks and volunteers. Regular voters at such events were usually in the minority. And they didn't display near the level of passion I found south of the border.

Across all ideological and geographic divides, the Iowans I met nearly all had opinions on the election and weren't shy about sharing them.

Alex Whibholm, a 22-year-old aerospace engineering student at that Cruz rally in Ames, was happy to explain why he favoured the conservative Texan over his chief rival, Mr. Trump. "Who knows what Trump actually believes? He's more of a populist, he just says what other people like to hear," he says.

Later the same day, I dropped in at one of Mr. Sanders's events in Cedar Rapids, an industrial city of 128,000. More than a thousand people had happily given up their Saturday night to cheer on the grandfatherly socialist in a hotel ballroom. They greeted every one of his lines – whether railing against the power of big banks or promising free health care – with ecstatic whoops and applause.

People in the audience spoke of Mr. Sanders in personal terms. "He's never changed or wavered on what he believes in. He's always been consistent," said Sara Mettille, 30, a benefits saleswoman. "He's not fake. He's honest and he sticks to what he believes in, no matter what anybody else thinks."

It's not just insurgent candidates such as Mr. Sanders or Mr. Cruz pulling ideological true believers, either. At a Clinton rally I attended in Iowa City – a picturesque college town of stately sandstone buildings and cobblestone streets – people lined up for more than an hour to squeeze into a university hall and pressed against a rope line to shake her hand.

Even away from the rallies, people were clearly thinking hard about the election. Mica Rodriguez, a mechanical engineering major at Iowa State University, had watched both parties' debates and had nuanced views on the candidates.

He liked Mr. Sanders's environmental policies – he proposes switching the country to wind and solar power generation – but preferred Jeb Bush's proposals for tackling terrorism. "I really liked Bernie's answers on climate change – he's actually going to do something about it," he said. "I actually like some of the things Jeb Bush has said – especially in his foreign policy, he's not all bark, no bite. I don't know if Bernie's foreign policy in Iran and Syria has been so firm. Bush seems more competent on that."

So why is this? How is it that Americans vote in lower proportions than those of us in the Great White North, and yet their political culture shows a level of engagement and passion that is often lacking in our culture of "meh?"

Maybe it's just typical American brashness. Maybe it's part of the street-fighting pluralism that defines the world's most powerful republic.

Or maybe it's the system itself. The method for choosing a U.S. president, after all, resembles a months-long reality television show in which the audience gets to periodically vote contestants off the island.

Unlike in Canada, where party leaders are chosen by paid-up party members, all registered voters in the United States can cast ballots in primaries or caucuses by indicating a preference of political party. The state-by-state voting begins in February and continues until the end of June. As it unfolds, lesser candidates gradually drop out until, finally, only one contender from each party remains for the head-to-head showdown in November.

Not only does this process ratchet up the drama and make it easier for candidates outside the establishment to mount credible campaigns – everyone from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama to Donald Trump – but it also allows average voters to be involved every step of the way.

Whether this results in better democratic outcomes is a matter of perspective, but it creates the sort of spectacle Canadian politics junkies can only dream of.