After the phony straw polls and less-than-stirring debates, after the wooing of soon-to-be forgotten activists, the pandering to the nostalgia of the family farm, the homage to labor unions and anti-abortion crusaders, Iowa voters on Monday finally flip the switch of the 2000 presidential campaign.
The caucuses held in living rooms, church basements and schools will provide the first measure of voter sentiment in an election year that will not only determine the presidency but also which party controls Congress and numerous state legislatures.
It will be a referendum on who gets credit for a bountiful economy, on who takes the blame for the impeachment of President Clinton and on whether a trend of cynicism and uninterest in the nation’s politics further escalates. It also will be a test of the role citizens want government to play in their lives, from health care and Social Security to education and taxes.
The contests begin in a climate of remarkable contentedness among the electorate. A recent Gallup Poll found that 83 percent of Americans were happy with the state of the economy and more than 7 in 10 say they are better off than they were eight years ago. They also give President Clinton and Congress positive job approval ratings. Voters even say they are satisfied with the choices they have for president.
Iowa and New Hampshire have retained their places as the starting gates for the presidential nominating process, inviting the now ritual criticism over whether two such small, nearly all-white states should have such a profound role in selecting the leaders of an increasingly diverse nation.
Both states have changed dramatically since 1988, the last time there was a race for the White House without an incumbent on the ballot.
Iowa is increasingly less rural and more suburban, with old farm towns being transformed into look-a-like edge cities; its economy is far less dependent on agriculture.
New Hampshire is no longer the flinty bastion of anti-tax conservatism. Instead it now boasts the highest concentration of software workers in the country and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation.
Both have more voters registered as independents rather than as Democrats or Republicans.
The story of the presidential campaign so far has been one of the surprising strength of insurgents, Republican John McCain and Democrat Bill Bradley.
It also is a story of rebounding front-runners in Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore, who seem to have found their footing at the right moment, at least in Iowa.
The race has been driven more by personality than by issues, though candidates in both parties, in an effort to win over the activist left and right wings of their parties, have made statements that could haunt them in the fall campaign.
Gore and Bush are expected to win in Iowa. McCain is on the ballot but has not campaigned there. Bush and Gore have the strong institutional support from party regulars that is critical in a caucus setting, and neither has made the kind of mistake that would cause most of their faithful to reconsider their vote.
For Gore his strength in the Hawkeye State is tinged with a twist of fate. When he ran for president in 1988, he dropped out of the caucus process and alternately labeled it “a ridiculous test,” “madness” and “certainly not democracy in action.” He now offers himself as the state’s most willing supplicant.
He has leveraged his position as vice president in every possible way. He has begun collecting the political chits he has accumulated for other Democrats. He hardly gives a speech without mentioning the administration’s delivering on millions of dollars in disaster relief after floods ravaged the state in 1993.
He is more relaxed on the campaign trail now and has shown ample evidence that he learned from his boss about campaigning. Although he lacks Clinton’s dive-in-the-crowd warmth,he is far more willing to lay himself bare than Bradley, who sometimes even neglects to ask crowds for their vote.
The vice president has the backing of most of Iowa’s elected officials and labor unions, precisely the kind of people who are essential to winning a caucus.
Consider that Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa), a Gore supporter, is host to two caucuses in his own home, and that one caucus site in Newton, the union hall, has been rented by the Gore campaign as its Jasper County headquarters.
When Bradley seemed to be surging, Gore’s campaign attacked him repeatedly. Gore has used the hammer in the velvet glove, embodied by his stump statement about his opponent, “He’s a good man with a bad plan.”
For his part, Bradley has yet to frame the compelling case why Gore should be denied the nomination. It is a difficult climate for a challenger trying to generate energy in a time of plenty.
Bradley’s campaign stumbled when Gore attacked him over farm issues. And for reasons not readily apparent, he has saturated Iowa television with commercials featuring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), hardly a face card in the state.
Bradley has raised the stakes in Iowa by spending more than $1 million on television advertising and competing vigorously for caucus votes. But his campaign said it would be pleased if it can reach 31 percent of the vote, the total Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) received in 1980 when he challenged President Jimmy Carter.
Bradley’s hopes are vested in people like Sandra Hall, a 57-year-old Des Moines woman who plans to attend her first caucus.
“I followed pretty closely everything he said so far,” she said at a political forum sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons. “I think it’s in his heart to do it. I don’t care for Gore. He’s all blow and no show.”
Bradley also needs to pull votes from Republicans. After Bradley spoke to the group, he had won over Marge Surbaugh, a suburban Republican woman who said she did not like her party’s tilt toward socially conservative views.
“I was very impressed,” Surbaugh said. “I’m going to make my move.”
On the Republican side, Bush has organized the state county-by-county, and only publisher Steve Forbes has matched his spending. Forbes has mounted a fierce campaign of ads that attack Bush on taxes and abortion, but Bush has countered by highlighting how such tactics hurt the GOP’s nominee in 1996, Bob Dole.
Bush faltered moderately in the fall when members of his party openly questioned his competence and intelligence. But he responded with strong performances in debates and has the unqualified advantage of having essentially unlimited resources to spend there.
Chasing those two are former Reagan administration officials Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer, and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Iowa almost never decides who the party nominee will be. Since 1976, only Jimmy Carter won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But the state in the heart of the Corn Belt does winnow the field and likely will do so on the GOP side.
After Monday, the circus that is the modern presidential campaign will leave town, and Iowa’s television will return to its regularly scheduled programming.
