OPTIMISTIC: Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he’s happy with the enthusiasm he’s seeing at town hall meetings and rallies in the early-voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina — but Iowa, it appears, is another story. “I’m sure we’ll do well in Iowa, we’ve just got a lot of work to do,” the Arizona senator said during a fundraising appearance Monday in Chicago. Unlike eight years ago, when he eschewed campaigning in Iowa to focus on a big win over then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in New Hampshire, McCain insisted that his campaign is in good shape this time in the nation’s first caucus state. A recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers showed him in single digits — good enough only for fifth place.
PREDICTION: President Bush says he believes Sen. Hillary Clinton will defeat Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries. “She’s got a great national presence and this is becoming a national primary,” Bush told reporter Bill Sammon. But he thinks the GOP nominee will follow him into the White House: “I believe our candidate can beat her, but it’s going to be a tough race.”
ENDORSED: Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, who once aspired to the Democratic presidential nomination, on Monday endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton. “I believe she will run a campaign that is both tough and smart when it comes to protecting our nation’s security,” Bayh said.
ON THE CALENDAR: Next Tuesday is a high holy day for Barack Obama supporters, who will mark the five-year anniversary of the moment their presidential candidate first spoke out publicly against the war in Iraq. Obama was just an Illinois state senator that day in 2002, when he went to a rally in Daley Plaza at the invitation of Chicago Democratic doyenne Bettylu Saltzman and called the president’s impending military action “a dumb war.” Not that many politicians were saying things like that at the time, so the campaign will mark the anniversary with a set of rallies in several cities. Obama also will deliver what’s billed as a foreign policy address in Chicago.
