Iowa gives candidates, media just the right stage

By J. Patrick Coolican (contact)

Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007 | 8 a.m.

Editor's note: Presidential campaigns are now fully engaged in Iowa, preparing for that state's first-in-nation caucus Jan. 3. With Nevada's presidential caucus scheduled for two weeks later, the Sun went to Iowa for a glimpse at what might be in store for voters here.

DES MOINES, Iowa - Just before a Rudy Giuliani town hall forum in Ames, an aide to the former New York City Mayor approaches Michael Novak and his mom Sally. They've got an adorable baby with them, Michael's daughter Juliette.

The Giuliani campaign would like to borrow the baby.

After the event, here comes Giuliani, and there's baby Juliette, and she's hoisted and kissed and the cameras are clicking.

Welcome to presidential politics, and Iowa presidential politics specifically, where authenticity is at once prized and mocked.

In Ottumwa, Iowa, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is having a roundtable conversation in an elementary school classroom with "ordinary" Iowans about retirement security. Are they worried about the future, and what can he do about it?

It's very natural and could be taking place in his kitchen in Chicago, except for the deep blue backdrops that read "Reclaiming the American Dream" and the 25 or so members of the media standing behind a rope line, their cameras clicking, video rolling, audio recording.

The Amana Colonies were until the 1930s a German communal settlement of seven villages. The brick architecture has been preserved and the chain stores kept out, and it's now a quaint and inarguably pleasant tourist trap. N.Y. Sen. Hillary Clinton hosts a rally in a classic old barn. Behind her, hay bales are stacked, and a giant American flag is pinned to them.

The message is clear: Clinton respects farmers and working people, and she honors the history that's such an inseparable part of this community.

The Iowa campaign, with its candidate-to-voter immediacy, can seem like a more authentic democracy. At an Obama event in Fairfield for example, Bob Shrem, who's seen six candidates this campaign cycle, says, "By shaking his hand and watching his body language, there's something much more real about it" that allows him to make a more informed decision.

Shrem says if more Americans experienced this, it would fundamentally alter our relationship to our government and the way in which we make political decisions.

His friend Arnold Burke isn't so sure. The few Iowans who participate in the caucus - it's typically from 6 to 10 percent - might be better informed than most, but that doesn't apply to most residents.

An even smaller percentage are actually learning about the candidates and attending events.

The faux-authentic moments so common during the Iowa campaign remind the observer of a withering essay written by Joan Didion called, appropriately, "Insider Baseball," after she traveled with eventual Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.

She described certain curious campaign rituals, such as "tarmac arrival with ball tossing," in which Dukakis and his press secretary got off the plane at every stop and tossed a baseball, staged for the TV cameras. "We have a lot of things like the ball tossing," a CNN producer told her. "We have the Greek dancing, for example."

And though the moments were staged, the national press corps wrote about them as if they were authentic, feeding it into some invented narrative about Dukakis being a "regular guy" or "tough enough" to be president.

Similarly, Americans are spoon-fed idyllic Iowa. But why Iowa? Why not, say, Nevada, which also has an early caucus.

There's a perfectly good explanation: Jimmy Carter won here in 1976, which catapulted him to the Democratic nomination, which made Iowa forever important in the eyes of the media. Then Sen. John Kerry did the same in 2004, which has candidates trying to replicate his strategy, and the media reporting on everyone's efforts.

Maybe it's this, however: The campaigns rely on television. For all the talk about retail politics, door-to-door campaigning and county fairs and the rest, campaigns are still won and lost on television.

TV producers know what their viewers want and don't want. They don't want a mirror held up to themselves. They don't want chain stores and malls, which both Iowa and Las Vegas have. What they want, Las Vegas doesn't have. They want hay bales and round table conversations and historic villages and town squares and corn and rolling hills and visible wooden beams.

And there's plenty of that in Iowa.