Iowa's Show Goes On, Mostly Without Iowans

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, January 2, 2008

DES MOINES, Jan. 1

It was the quintessential Iowa caucus scene: Supporters of Republican and Democratic candidates sat at Buzzard Billy's bar, holding campaign signs and chatting amiably. Democratic hopeful Bill Richardson shook hands, giving the Iowa voters the one-on-one attention they expect.

"It's all grass roots here in Iowa," said the New Mexico governor, wearing galoshes and cotton chinos. "It's not big media, big technology."

Cut!

Actually, Governor, it is big media and big technology. The event was put together by CNN. The supporters in the crowd were mostly from out of state, sent here by the campaigns at the cable network's invitation to serve as a backdrop for the live shots.

And the whole thing was being broadcast by the CNN Election Express bus, parked outside Buzzard Billy's and carrying equipment worth more than $1 million: four-path HD satellite transmission, random access digital video server, LED studio lights, 12 high-definition TVs, a 42-inch plasma set, and, of course, an onboard shower and makeup table.

With the caucuses now two days away, all Iowa's a stage, and all its men and women merely players. "That's the joke of Iowa," said Justin Berkley, an Iowa native and the bar's general manager. "Everyone wants to picture us as an episode of 'Hee Haw,' sitting at the counter in the diner or out in the cornfield."

For the most part, the locals -- at least the politically active ones -- play along. "The beauty of it is, the rest of the year, everyone will try so hard to be metropolitan, and for four weeks every four years we try darn hard to be hicks," Berkley said.

His phrase for the Iowans' playacting: "the full-on hokey."

To paraphrase John Edwards, there are two Iowas. One is in the popular imagination, where the locals care passionately about their caucus and talk earnestly with presidential prospects in their living rooms. Then there's the actual Iowa, where most people are indifferent and a small band of the politically active act as extras in the media's stories from the heartland.

Iowans' participation in the caucuses is notorious: 6 percent of eligible voters showed up in the 2004 Democratic caucuses -- translating to about 125,000 people. If that number got much lower, voters might be outnumbered by the thousands of journalists, campaign staffers and volunteers who crowd Des Moines's hotels, flights and restaurants, reading tea leaves to divine what the small minority of Iowa voters will do on Thursday.

"So what do we think of the new Des Moines Register poll?" asked NBC's "First Read," an online political tip sheet that, along with the Fix, the Page, the Caucus, the Trail, the Hotline, the Note, the Playbook, the Corner and the Stump, follows the Iowa voter's every hiccup. The poll "has always been considered the 'gold standard' of Iowa polls," First Read reasoned, but "Do note that [columnist David] Yepsen seems a bit skeptical."

Duly noted. But how to turn inside speculation into a compelling story? Answer: the full-on hokey.

To get the feel of Iowa on New Year's morning, CNN had its anchor, Suzanne Malveaux, leave the heated studio of the campaign bus and stand outside in 7-degree temperatures, with wind whipping snow into her face. On air, she beamed and promised "live, raw and unfiltered" coverage of the caucuses. Off air, she bounced, shivered, sniffled, exercised her freezing jaws, and called out for coffee, tissues and foot warmers.

"Oh, my God," Malveaux, visibly shivering, told Richardson when he arrived for his interview. "This is a physical feat."

Three hours later, it was Sen. Joseph Biden's turn with the frozen anchor. CNN flashed an image on-screen of Biden's sign wavers inside Buzzard Billy's. "You've got a lot of supporters," Malveaux said.

Actually, he had about 10 supporters there, and they were from Boston, New York and other distant points. John McCain also had supporters in the bar -- from New Jersey and Delaware -- and Richardson had about three dozen, mostly from New Mexico.

Where were the Iowans? "I don't think they appreciate it enough," said Alex McVeagh, a McCain volunteer at the bar who came from Tennessee. "I'll tell them I'm a college kid who drove 15 hours here, and they'll say, 'Why am I getting these damn calls?' "

But if the majority of Iowans are indifferent, the politically engaged are happy to play along with the candidates and the media.

While CNN continued to broadcast from Buzzard Billy's, Republican candidate Mitt Romney arrived for a "House Party Huddle" a few miles away in West Des Moines. The house party is the very essence of retail politics: Iowans bake casseroles and invite neighbors in to meet a candidate.

But instead of finding Kornfield Kounty, Romney encountered five TV camera crews, a big speaker system and a man dressed in an Uncle Sam suit claiming to be from the "Pig Hall of Fame." Fifty or so journalists, from bloggers to reporters from France's Le Monde, dwarfed the 30-odd Iowans in the place -- and the locals didn't perform the "Hee Haw" routine very well.

The host was a small-business lobbyist, his wife a former Republican Party official. "When the candidates come in, they don't realize how up to date we are," observed Ed Wallace, a guest at the house party and head of the Iowa Taxpayers Association. "They think we're bumpkins. We're upper middle-class, college-educated."

Romney stepped onto a platform to speak and surveyed the room. "There's the rest of the crowd, back there behind the cameras!" he reported.

Surrounded by reporters, a lone man in the back raised his hand. "Iowa voter!" he called out.