By PHK
Has time for change finally come?
Sometimes American voters may not be so obtuse after all. That’s what I came away with after hearing Thursday’s Iowa caucus results. That’s also why I think early caucuses and primaries in small states like Iowa and New Hampshire are important: they force candidates to get back to the basics, meet ordinary people face-to-face and listen to their concerns - as well as offer these presidential hopefuls opportunities to hone their public speaking skills and try out their campaign-staff crafted speeches.
Makes one wonder, however, what the 2008 campaign would be like if America's political – as well as entertainment - speech writers were on strike.
The good news is that these first in the season, kick-off election campaign events require caucus participants and primary voters to think a little bit more for themselves rather than solely depending on the “pearls of wisdom” that roll from the lips of mass media celebrities and political pundits – the electronic age’s ward healers - instructing them how to vote.
An aside: I am less than thrilled with the “ward healer” role Evangelical churches evidently played in the get-out-the-vote for ex-Arkansas governor and preacher Mike Huckabee in Iowa Thursday evening. This may well foreshadow things to come in states with large Evangelical populations.
As far as I’m concerned, “family values – or the code words for all those divisive “right to life” and “way of life” issues - belong in church, temple, mosque or home not in the body politic. At least that’s how I read the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. I think religious leaders of whatever stripe should tend to their parishioners’ spiritual concerns and refrain from advising their flocks on how to vote on ballot box issues.
Fortunately, Evangelical Christianity is not big in New Hampshire. The population in the Granite State has, from what I’ve seen when visiting, a “live free or die” mentality and the natives a deeply independent streak. My New Hampshire born and bred ancestors would roll over in their graves if they had to listen to any politician tell them what to believe – or how to live their lives.
I wonder if the Iowa Republican “caucus” had operated a little more like a real caucus and not a simple get-out-the-vote primary how Huckabee would have fared.
Why? He may well be the Republican’s best orator and represent the Evangelicals economic needs far better than any of the other Republican candidates, but he simply doesn’t know enough on the foreign policy side of the equation to pass GO – let alone collect $200 and in a caucus someone might have pointed that out. Or not. The Republican Party king makers also apparently recognize that Huckabee's out of his foreign policy depth: they are apparently even more apoplectic about his populist rhetoric and concern for the well being of the less fortunate. Doesn’t fit their Lockian – or Hobbsian - business model. This Evangelical-Republican establishment electoral alliance is bound to fracture - when, not whether is the question.
Ironically, the only Republican who has credible foreign policy credentials – although I don’t agree with his views on the Middle East – is John McCain. Mitt Romney’s a foreign policy light-weight too.
Testing the water
But back to 2008 campaign beginnings: Neither Iowa nor New Hampshire represents a cross section of America. Neither state has the ethnic diversity that is the U.S. today and neither is an historically swing state – but these two early “water-testers” may well tell us more about the political landscape in this country in 2008 than any opinion poll conducted thus far.
If, for instance, Barack Obama could win the Iowa Democratic caucus as decisively as he did in this 95 per cent racially white, farming state when the pollsters declared the outcome a toss up among three candidates as late as Thursday night’s evening news – it says a lot about Obama's viability (not to mention the deficits of the pre-caucus opinion polls) come November. That New Mexico’s Hispanic Governor Bill Richardson – albeit with only two percent of the Iowa caucus vote – can remain in the race in fourth place also suggests that among Democratic voters, at least, race is not an issue.
Both Obama and Richardson appealed to the younger voters and independents – and in Iowa they came through in spades and on the Democratic side. If anyone attempts to play the race card, all they need to do is remember the Macaca moment that sunk George Allen’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate in Virginia in 2006 – and be well advised to slink away. Youtube and its grass roots photographers are even more ubiquitous in 2008 than they were in 2006.
Shattering images
I’m also struck by the shattering of the carefully crafted media images of Hillary constructed and sold by Hillary’s Clinton’s able campaign staff. Iowans showed us that Senator Clinton is far from invincible and that despite her bulging war chest, her nomination is not the foregone conclusion that she and her campaign managers would still like us to believe.
In Iowa we also learned that on both sides of the great U.S. political divide money isn’t everything and that substance counts too. That’s all to the good.
Maybe Iowa’s results also suggest that the country has concluded it’s time for a major change - not only away from the burned-out Bush dynasty but also from the Clinton family and politics as usual. I’m sorry, but presidential spouse title does not translate into extensive political experience to me. In fact, Hillary has far less relevant experience on her resume than fourth place Bill Richardson or Senators Joe Biden or Chris Dodd who were just forced to cave because they hadn’t “caught on.”
Besides, the entrenched powers and money behind Senator Clinton who want to continue to conduct business as usual because, well, business as usual is good for them, make me nervous.
Skewed media coverage, yet again
What does concern me the most, however, is the media coverage of the campaign thus far particularly of the Democratic side. It seems to me that the race became a three way one almost before it began, because the media itself turned Clinton, Edwards and Obama into super stars while ignoring all others - several of whom have as much or more experience than anyone in the Republican field or the media’s anointed Democratic trio. As David Brooks concluded Thursday night in a pre-results broadcast on PBS's Newshour, “if there had been camera crews” at the other Democratic candidates’ “speeches, people would have seen that, and I think they’d be competitive.”
Would someone please tell me then, why the MSM has regularly managed to cover extensively at least five Republican candidates – most of whom with less experience than several of the “second tier” Democrats not to mention most with far less chance of winning? Isn’t something wrong with this picture?
Or maybe, unless and until the media plays fair with its coverage, it shouldn’t be allowed to report early campaign events at all. And if Iowa’s results are a guide, the opinion pollsters should, in particular, be kept at home. Now that's a novel thought.
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