The Folks with First Say
By WALTER SHAPIRO
Not since that patter-perfect trombone salesman, Professor Harold Hill, arrived in River City to organize a boys' band has Iowa seen a confidence game this audacious. But where The Music Man set out to hoodwink the locals, this time the tables are turned: Iowa has pulled off a sting on the rest of the nation. Who could have imagined that Iowa of all places could create a $20 million winter tourist industry? This is, after all, a state where the weather is so fierce that Des Moines had to construct a latticework of skywalks to shield shoppers from the wind chill. Here is a state that, though the highest elevation is 1,670 ft., has found a way to lure city slickers away from the ski slopes of New Hampshire. The secret, of course, is the tribal ritual known as the Iowa caucuses, that moment in presidential politics when the snowblower finally hits the driveway.
On the night of Feb. 8, while most Americans are sensibly warming themselves from the glow of TV tubes, upwards of 200,000 Iowans will brave the harsh elements to attend political meetings in 2,943 precincts across the state. Their ostensible purpose is to pick delegates to attend obscure county conventions in March, but the results will be heralded in 76-trombone fashion as the first referendum on the 1988 field. In one of American democracy's strangest eccentricities, these 200,000 dutiful citizens from an atypical prairie and river-soil state could have far more say in sorting out the presidential contenders than anyone else.
Even so, there will be few of the familiar trappings of democracy: no polling booths, no official ballots issued by the state and, for the Democrats, not even a shred of secrecy about each participant's vote. Confusion, even chaos, is likely. In years past, there have never been fully accurate tallies of exactly who the Iowa caucus attendees supported. But like compulsive gamblers playing with a 47-card deck, the press and conventional wisdom makers will somehow manage to anoint winners, belittle losers and quickly rejigger the odds for the Feb. 16 New Hampshire primary and beyond. In a year with no cutting issues or commanding front runners, Iowa looms larger than ever as it gets ready to bless one Republican and one Democrat with the elusive "Big Mo."
Three weeks before the caucuses, Iowans are still reluctant to pledge their troth or even go steady. A TIME poll of voters who say they are likely to attend a caucus found that only 34% of the Republicans and 36% of the Democrats were firm in their allegiance to a specific candidate. Even the Republican race, dominated by George Bush and Bob Dole, remains difficult to handicap. "There is a very large group of Republicans still undecided, maybe 40%," says George Wittgraf, the Bush campaign's Iowa coordinator. "That doesn't show up in surveys that are 'screened' for caucus attenders."
But at least among the Republicans, it seems possible to frame the right questions. Can Dole maintain his apparent lead, or will his homespun, one-of- us posturing ring hollow amid talk of $600,000 family income and convoluted blind-trust transactions? Will Bush's attempts at modified full disclosure put Iranscam to rest and allow him to surge from behind with a last-minute television blitz? Can Pat Robertson somehow squeeze into second place with his still largely invisible army of politicized charismatics? As for Jack Kemp and Pete du Pont, will weak finishes in the caucuses doom their last-ditch efforts in New Hampshire?
Among the Democrats, there is only one near certainty: Albert Gore, who has shrewdly and vociferously forsaken Iowa to concentrate on the Super Tuesday primaries in the South, will probably finish last. Otherwise, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is right when he calls the Democratic race the "most volatile campaign I've ever seen." Since Gary Hart's initial withdrawal last May, no Democrat has been able to maintain a firm lead. "As campaigns come into Iowa and get organized, for a moment they're hot," says Bonnie Campbell, who chairs the state party. "It happened to Dick Gephardt, it happened to Mike Dukakis, and now it's happening to Paul Simon. But at some point, you bump up against a ceiling."
Most political organizers believe Simon remains the candidate to beat, although widespread skepticism about his deficit arithmetic has taken a toll. The recent TIME poll gives Hart a weak lead, but the once defrocked candidate will have trouble mobilizing enough of this protest vote on caucus night, if only because he has no organization. As in 1984, when he received less than 2% support, Jesse Jackson attracts more curiosity than likely votes. But Bruce Babbitt, who lags at the bottom of most polls, has the organization to rebound dramatically: his outspoken candor has transformed him into the media's pinup of the month.
Viewed from almost any vantage point, the talismanic importance of the Iowa caucuses is bizarre. They are not buttressed by tradition: until Jimmy Carter discovered media magic there in 1976, Iowa was not even as important as neighboring Nebraska in the presidential-selection process. The caucuses are not a perfect bellwether either: Iowans embraced George Bush in 1980 and Walter Mondale in 1984; both then lost the New Hampshire primary. Turnout for the caucuses is small compared with most early-primary states: New Hampshire voters are about four times as likely to participate as their Iowa counterparts. As a prominent Des Moines attorney who has attended every Democratic caucus since 1976 asked quietly, "Why Iowa? What have we done to deserve all this attention? We're really not that typical."
Why Iowa indeed? It is fine for David Oman, the co-chairman of the state Republican Party, to claim, "Iowa is a good place to start. This is mid- America, and most of us live in small towns. The state is very open, clean and fair. There are no political-machine bosses to dominate the debate, and we are very much a two-party state with a level playing field." All true, and these high-minded attributes taken by themselves would be enough to make Iowa the Miss Congeniality of presidential politics. But Midwestern hospitality, admirable as it may be, does not compensate for the lack of diversity that undermines Iowa's claims as the nation's leading test market for Campaign '88.
For by almost every reckoning, the state, if not quite Wonder bread, is at least whole wheat: overwhelmingly white and largely Protestant and middle class. Only about 2% of Iowa's 2.8 million people are black or Hispanic. The state's proportion of foreign-born residents is equally minuscule. At the Waterloo Rotary Club recently, the toastmaster told an ethnic joke -- about Norwegians from Minnesota.
Urban problems are largely an abstraction. Des Moines, the state's capital and largest city, has a population of 183,000, and its revitalized downtown area more closely resembles a suburban shopping mall than a major city. In Iowa, crime is something that happens on television: the state's rate of violent crime is 60% lower than the national average. Iowans frequently boast of never locking their doors; politeness remains almost a state religion. As Roxanne Conlin, the unsuccessful 1982 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, jokes, "Being rude and killing someone are about on par here."
Iowans have a solidity and a temperance that make the state seem like an outpost of Lake Wobegon. The Hawkeye State first embraced Prohibition in 1882, and the lemonade legacy remains: Iowans drink less liquor per capita than the residents of any state save West Virginia, where illegal moonshine is not counted in the standings. Des Moines is the Jell-O-eating capital of the nation. Cakes are still made from scratch: consumers buy ingredients like baking chocolate at roughly double the national norm.
Marketers view Iowans as stubbornly resistant to change; they are unlikely to be the first to try new types of products. "I would take a new tartar- control toothpaste into Des Moines or the Quad Cities because it wouldn't require people to change their behavior by brushing their teeth more," theorizes Watts Wacker, senior vice president of the survey-research firm of Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. "But I wouldn't take a tartar-control mouthwash there, because that requires change in usage patterns." Iowans are even contrariant enough to believe still in the superiority of American automobiles: foreign-car sales are only half the national average.
Some of these traditional attitudes are rooted in a simple yet alarming demographic reality: Iowa's population is getting smaller and older. Since 1980 the state has lost 80,000 people, many of them younger workers who could not find jobs in a troubled farm-based economy. A University of Iowa study of recent graduates found that less than half continued to live within the state. "It scares me that Iowa is losing population," said Vern Harvey, a Bettendorf builder, after a recent Kemp rally in nearby Davenport. Replied Pete Agnew, an accountant in his late 30s: "People I know my age have gone to find the rainbow in California."
This brain drain has left the parents and grandparents behind. Iowa is now the nation's third oldest state. The nonpartisan American Association of Retired Persons, boasting 300,000 members in the state, is spending $250,000 on TV ads and phone banks to prompt older Iowans to make their presence felt on caucus night. Senior-citizen centers are frequent campaign stops, as most candidates vie to affirm their commitment to the sanctity of ever rising Social Security benefits. Only Babbitt, who advocates full taxation of benefits for the affluent, and Dole, who is willing to freeze cost of living adjustments, dissent from this united front of pandering politicians.
But it is a mistake to assume that Iowans can simply be reduced to a Grant Wood painting. Gone is the era when John Gunther could confidently declare in Inside U.S.A., published in 1947, "Corn is everything in Iowa." The state is still the nation's leading producer of corn and hogs, but these days only 10% of the labor force continue to work the land. "Many people in Iowa have never been on a farm," says Political Scientist James Hutter of Iowa State University. "I imagine that fewer than half of my students have spent more than a day on a farm."
These age-old images of Iowa, however, die hard. Even the candidates, who routinely feign enthusiasm while touring hogpens, foster the hayseed stereotypes. Although their state dominates the news in the closing weeks before the caucuses, Iowans can rightly claim to be misunderstood. Four myths in particular color popular assumptions about the state and its voters.
Myth: Jessica Lange in Country symbolizes Iowa farm families' being driven off the land they love.
The farm crisis was indeed real, but current problems are not nearly so dire as movie images would suggest. During the first half of the decade, Iowa farmers were devastated by high interest rates, falling commodity prices and a collapse in land prices, their primary collateral for loans to pay for equipment and seed. But then came a costly federal bailout: the $28 billion 1985 farm bill. Aided by a falling dollar that spurred agricultural exports, farm income soared by 30% between mid-1986 and mid-1987. "Farmers are making strides," concedes Neil Harl, a professor of agriculture at Iowa State. "They are not using income to buy machinery. It will be two or three years before we are out of the problem."
Myth: Iowa's economy is mired in depression amid a decade of prosperity.
In truth, Iowa is not doing badly these days, thank you. Republican Governor Terry Branstad hailed 1987 as the "best year of this decade for Iowa's economy." The state's current unemployment rate is less than 5%, significantly better than the national average. Many of Iowa's new jobs, however, are unskilled, low-wage positions. Organized labor, which has lost one-third of its membership since 1979, is particularly feeling the pinch. John Deere, the Waterloo agricultural-implement manufacturer, has slashed its work force from 16,300 in 1980 to 6,000 today. Rath, a major Waterloo meat- $ packer, went bankrupt, laying off 2,000 workers. Perry Chapin, who heads the South-Central Iowa Federation of Labor, broods, "If you want to work, you have to take a cut."
Myth: Iowans are not quite bumpkins, but they are a tad unsophisticated.
Nonsense. This canard cannot survive a single question-and-answer session between Iowans and a candidate. Small-town voters routinely ask probing questions about esoteric topics like Namibia. These days even the little old lady in Dubuque is probably watching C-SPAN as well as reading The New Yorker. In 1986, Iowa's high school students ranked first in the nation in their scores on the college-entrance exams administered by the American College Testing Program. Nearly nine of ten Iowa students graduate from high school. This commitment to public education fuses with Iowa's highly developed sense of civic duty, which stresses service on school boards and other local bodies.
Myth: Iowa stubbornly clings to its Midwestern isolationist tradition.
There is a germ of truth here, since Iowans in both parties are undeniably more dovish than the national electorate. The TIME poll of probable Iowa caucus attendees, for example, found that Iowa Democrats overwhelmingly and Republicans narrowly oppose aid to the contras in Nicaragua. This is in contrast to the poll's national sample, in which Republicans tend to support contra aid and Democrats oppose it, but by a narrower margin than in Iowa.
Yet the isolationist label is misleading. Iowans are in fact interested in world affairs, with a markedly nonbelligerent, almost smile-button attitude. Economics may provide part of the explanation: Iowa is that rare state that can be said to live off the peace industry. Devoid of military bases or major defense industries, Iowa is linked to the wider world through trade. Explains Democratic Party Leader Campbell: "Our farmers are proud to feed people overseas. There's a conflict between that and killing people overseas. This kind of thinking breeds a certain degree of pacifist sentiment."
Among Democrats, that sentiment is tightly organized. Iowa's leading peace group, STARPAC, sponsored a Democratic debate last September and subsequently gave its blessing to all participants except Gore. The antipathy is mutual, since Gore used the forum to attack STARPAC's demand for a pledge to ban all flight testing of missiles. Not long afterward, the Tennessee Senator officially embarked on his ignore-Iowa strategy. As Campaign Manager Fred Martin says, "Gore came to the conclusion that if it took pandering to interest groups to win the Iowa caucuses, then that wasn't the goal."
Even the leading Republicans have learned to soft-pedal hawkish rhetoric in Iowa. Bush's first Iowa TV ad, aired last month, stressed his strong support for the President's INF treaty with the Soviet Union. Similarly, no epithet hurled by the Bush campaign has irked Dole more than the label "Senator Straddle" for his awkward stutter-step on the INF treaty.
In terms of the presidential caucuses, there are, in effect, two Iowas. Big Iowa -- the state of 2.8 million people and 1.5 million registered voters -- is almost irrelevant, except as a scenic backdrop for campaign commercials and TV sound bites. All that matters is Little Iowa, a mythical state with a population smaller than Alaska's, a tiny political universe of roughly 110,000 Republicans and 100,000 Democrats likely to attend the caucuses on a cold Monday night in February. The rub, of course, is that the residents of Little Iowa are inconveniently sprinkled across the 55,941 sq. mi. of Big Iowa, indistinguishable from their neighbors by any characteristics save their political commitment and, perhaps, the presence of their name on a campaign's canvass list.
In Iowa, organization is a fancy name for having the right lists and enough people to call them. Aside from Gore and Alexander Haig, who have hoisted the white flag, and Hart and Jackson, who are depending on name recognition and serendipity, the other nine campaigns are following roughly the same strategy: identify your supporters, woo the uncommitted, and make certain to get out your hard-core vote on Feb. 8. Caucus night for the Republicans is generally a well-ordered affair. But Democrats, characteristically, must labor under the heavy burdens of participatory democracy run amok. Caucuses frequently last beyond midnight, as participants debate policy resolutions and try to comply with the party's arcane threshold requirements, which demand that a candidate win 15% support to garner any delegates.
Television ads are a notoriously inefficient way to reach Little Iowa, because most of the message and money is squandered on nonparticipants. Still, all major players in the state have made heavy media buys, though Bush has carefully hoarded his ammunition for the climactic final days. The ads currently running on Iowa TV are revealing, particularly for what they say ! about each candidate's strategy as the campaign moves into the final weeks. Confidence is the implicit message conveyed by Dole and Simon: their commercials are vague and thematic, presumably designed to do little more than solidify inchoate support. Robertson has perfected a different kind of soft sell, speaking directly into the camera without props or backdrop, glossing over his TV-preacher past and ending with the soothing words, "I'm not asking for your vote. I'm just asking you to listen."
Gephardt, in contrast, is almost hyperactive. His strongest commercial is one in which he hammers home the protectionist message that, because of trade barriers, a $10,000 Chrysler K-car costs $48,000 in Korea. The ads have helped Gephardt jump in the polls, and once again he appears within striking distance of the leaders in Iowa. Dukakis cannot seem to decide on an approach: his ads range from soporific issue spots to an ill-defined image appeal. In contrast, Babbitt is leading with his strength: in a recently aired commercial, an unseen narrator reads the candidate's favorable press notices in the Los Angeles Times, the New Republic and TIME. As for Kemp and du Pont, both trying to squeeze out Robertson for third place, their media strategies amount to little more than a "Hail Mary" forward pass. Both are stressing their favorite long-shot issues: tax cuts for Kemp and restructured Social Security for du Pont.
Campaign organizers in both parties have a saying they repeat in almost mantra-like fashion: "Organize, organize, organize, and then get hot at the end." After a sizzling campaign week to open the New Year, both Bush and Dole decided they did not like it so hot so soon. For most of last week, the G.O.P. front runners went into a defensive crouch fending off their personal demons: the Iran-contra affair for Bush and for Dole a series of murky questions about the handling of his wife Elizabeth's blind trust. The Kansas Senator was provoked to fire his finance chairman, who was also the administrator of the trust. Neither of these press flaps seems to have much traction; even private Dole polls say Bush has not been damaged by Iranscam in Iowa. But by the weekend, the Battling Bickersons of G.O.P. politics were at it again, as Bush and Dole clashed at a New Hampshire debate over the release of their voluminous tax returns.
The stakes in Iowa are far different for Bush than for Dole. Buoyed by a messy but welcome victory in Michigan's county conventions last week -- an episode so byzantine and now so mired in legal disputes that it would have had an impact only if Bush had been badly beaten -- the Vice President can afford to come in second in Iowa, though not by an embarrassing margin. His money and broad organization would allow him a good chance to recoup in New Hampshire eight days later. But defeat is a luxury that Dole can ill afford. Peter Teeley, the Bush campaign spokesman, is exaggerating when he claims, "If we win Iowa, it's all over. We'd have beaten Dole in his own backyard." In truth, the minority leader has enough money to survive defeat. But it is impossible to derail a sitting Vice President unless you win somewhere, and Iowa is Dole's best hope.
Pat Robertson is the wild card. Though his support is narrow and his negatives are Nixonian (56% in the latest nationwide TIME poll view him "unfavorably"), Robertson's adherents are deeply committed. They will work for him and round up other "spirit-filled" supporters on caucus night. If the turnout is low, his committed crusaders could jolt the party establishment; even Bush insiders concede that Robertson might finish second. That would come close to crippling whoever runs third and prompt party regulars to rally round the Iowa winner as a way of derailing Robertson.
The conventional Democratic contenders in Iowa -- Simon, Dukakis, Gephardt and Babbitt -- have been stuck on a treadmill devoid of any themes that arouse half the curiosity of Gary Hart's dramatic return from exile. Simon seems the beneficiary of this placid status quo, while Dukakis just drifts, perhaps from New-Hampshire-is-next overconfidence. But Babbitt and Gephardt, in different ways, have at last seized on what they believe is a cutting issue in Iowa: populism.
Babbitt framed the issue by intervening in a local dispute over whether IBP, a militantly antiunion meat packer with a woeful safety record, should build a plant in Manchester, Iowa. The controversy might seem arcane to outsiders, but IBP symbolizes antiunion trends that arouse deep feelings among Iowa workers. Babbitt won statewide headlines by labeling IBP a "corporate outlaw" and a "monument to everything shabby . . . in the American economy." It was not empty rhetoric, since Babbitt artfully used IBP as a bridge to dramatize his own detailed proposals for employee participation and "workplace democracy." Gephardt has long wooed Iowa union members and farmers with two pieces of special-interest legislation: a protectionist trade bill and an agricultural program that would raise crop prices. This give-them-what-they-want stance may make political sense, but it has also won Gephardt the enmity of editorial writers, including those at the Des Moines Register. In response, Gephardt lashed out at the "opinion centers, Wall Street and editorial boards" and exhorted Democrats not to "play the Establishment game on foreign trade." Campaigning as an "anti-Establishment" candidate is an odd turnabout for the Missouri Congressman, who built his reputation as a Washington insider. But in a flaccid field, it seems to be working.
Both Babbitt and Gephardt have to take daring gambles, since their underfunded and overextended campaigns simply cannot afford weak third- or fourth-place finishes. How they must envy Dukakis, who has raised $11 million and will go on to New Hampshire with a home-field advantage. Simon, who has demonstrated surprising staying power, is confronted with the same question as Dole: If not Iowa, where? Conversely, a Simon victory could confound the race. As University of New Hampshire Political Scientist David Moore argues, "The momentum associated with the Iowa results could very well mean victory for Simon and Dole in New Hampshire if they win in Iowa."
What about Hart, that simultaneously brash and spectral presence who seems to symbolize the Democratic doldrums? His long-awaited first joint appearance with his Democratic rivals came last Friday night at a debate sponsored by the Des Moines Register. But instead of fireworks, there was only fizzle. Moderator James Gannon opened with the predictable adultery question, and Hart rattled off his polished yet somewhat jarring apologia: "We have never expected perfection from our leaders, and I don't think we should begin now." He added, "I'm a sinner, but my religion tells me that all of us are sinners." His rivals never mentioned Hart's character or morals. Two hours was all it took for Hart, who seemed wan and out of practice, to take on the earnest aspect of just another Democrat debating issues.
But the debate was important for another reason: it served as a reminder of how much Iowa itself has at stake on Feb. 8. Albert Gore came to Des Moines not to seriously contest the caucuses but to chastise Democrats for placing such importance on the unrepresentative Iowa test market. But the process has to start somewhere. Though Iowa may not be a perfect microcosm of America, it % offers an educated and committed electorate that takes its moment in the winter sun seriously. And though the caucus process may seem unreasonably quirky, it serves to test the depth of commitment people feel toward a candidate, something that ordinary primaries do not measure.
Perhaps, ideally, the race should begin in a more representative state, like Missouri. But for now, at least until someone like Gore or Mario Cuomo successfully rewrites the rules, Iowa's King Caucus happens to be first. And as long as its results are perceived to be important, they will be.
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With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Michael Duffy and Gavin Scott/Des Moines