Here they come, lining up for the quadrennial game of Chutes and Ladders–corn-fed, solid citizens from the Midwest, bursting with heartland values and Main Street common sense that surely will carry them to the White House.
Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana have in recent days either jumped into the 2008 presidential race or grabbed a little publicity by setting up “exploratory committees,” legal fig leaves that barely mask the burning ambition to go for the political gold.
What could be better in an age of baseball, hot dog and apple pie political marketing than to have people who can make their way through a county fair or a potluck dinner blindfolded and tell you where to get the best pork tenderloin sandwich? You want family values in the White House, someone who is on a first-name basis with the local pastor? Look no further than the green fields and fruited plains of the Midwest.
Just don’t put a lot of money on someone from the Midwest getting elected. The historical record strongly suggests that heartland candidates will slide hard down the political chute and land with a thud. They’ve been doing it for more than a half-century.
The last born, raised and elected president from the Midwest was Missouri’s Harry Truman, and that was almost 60 years ago. A Cubs-like drought has settled on the region since then, dooming the aspirations of stalwart public servants such as Paul Simon (Illinois), John Glenn (Ohio), Walter Mondale (Minnesota), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Richard Lugar (Indiana), Richard Gephardt (Missouri) and Bob Dole (Kansas). True, Gerald Ford (Michigan) became president, but that was accidental and he could not get elected on his own.
Compare that decades-long shutout to the first half of the 20th Century, when five Midwesterners–William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover and Truman–sat in the Oval Office.
Now candidates from the East and West Coasts and locales south venture into the Midwest, waxing nostalgic about small-town American virtues, often long gone (such as the small family farm) and sometimes the product of myth (that everybody got along just swell back then.)
It’s easy to conclude that the mythology of the Midwest is a lot more attractive than the candidates from the Midwest.
Midwest’s `million Mayberrys’
“There is this nostalgic notion of farm-life values, apple pie and hard work, even as the family farm has been disappearing at a rapid rate,” said Timothy Walch, director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa. “The nation has never lost the desire to come from Mayberry, and the Midwest is populated by a million Mayberrys.
“Nobody ever says they are savvy, street-smart urban hustlers,” Walch added. “[They talk about] going down to the swimmin’ hole or talking to Judge Brown on the courthouse steps.”
Vilsack, the two-term Iowa governor, is trying to claim exclusive ownership of the Main Street franchise. On the eve of his Nov. 30 presidential declaration, he invited about 150 friends from his adopted hometown, Mt. Pleasant, to a potluck supper at the middle school where his wife, Christie, was a student and taught. There were long, groaning tables of coleslaw, Jell-O salad, fried chicken, meatloaf and casseroles in the hall. Two classrooms were used for desserts. Everyone was on a first-name basis, and the most frequent remark heard was, “Did you get enough to eat?”
Vilsack talked about the virtues of the potluck supper and how it represents “a sense of community and a sense of belonging.” In Washington last week, he reminded The Associated Press that his home address is 402 N. Main St.
“We live on Main Street, and we understand those values,” Vilsack said.
That may not be enough, because the Midwest is not the political force it once was, and values–however vaguely defined–are not confined to any one region of the country. What’s more, any smart candidate with a lot of money and a good handler can claim ownership anyway.
“Look at Ronald Reagan,” said Michael Devine, director of the Truman Presidential Museum and Library in Independence, Mo. “He was born in Illinois and was part of the huge migration westward. . . . He spent his whole adult life in California, but he carried with him what he believed to be Midwestern values.”
There was a time, Devine said, when governors of states such as Illinois and Ohio, by virtue of simply being elected governor, were instantly considered potential presidential candidates. Now, with the movement of the population (and electoral votes) west and south, governors of California and–less so–Florida are more likely to be assumed to have presidential stuff.
Primary schedule hurts
The primary elections’ timing also works against Midwest candidates by effectively ordaining the nominees before the overwhelming majority of Midwesterners even cast a vote.
But Richard Norton Smith, who most recently was director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and is an authority on the presidency, said failed Midwestern candidates lost for reasons that went far beyond geography.
“Admirable as they might be as human beings, and as much as they might personify Midwestern values, there are perfectly good reasons why their parties did not anoint them,” Smith said. “We all want Jimmy Stewart as a candidate.”
But Jimmy Stewart (born in Pennsylvania) can come from anywhere–maybe even Illinois, where Barack Obama, the rock star U.S. senator, is doing nothing to discourage talk that he’ll be a candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Smith advised Vilsack to use caution in touting values associated with the Midwest because, inevitably, someone will recall Iowa’s link to the start of the Great Depression.
“Wait until someone says, `Gov. Vilsack, the last president from Iowa was Herbert Hoover.’ He ought to be careful about how far he takes that,” Smith said.
Almost 80 years after the stock market crash of 1929, Hoover still bears the stigma of the Great Depression–so much so, Walch said, that major GOP presidential candidates who spend a lot of time campaigning in Iowa somehow never manage to stop by the Hoover museum in West Branch.
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tmjones@tribune.com
