At least I assume he's considering a nap after his well-publicized 36-hour marathon that ended a while ago in West Des Moines...I am still up, having just returned from an Obama event at the local Hoover High School (named, I found out, after Herbert Hoover who was dispatched in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression by Democrat Franklin Roosevelt.) More than 1.000 (estimated) turned out on a cold night and I saw more than a few walking for three-four block walk in the cold: I was one of them) for an event that didn't start until around 10 p.m. I know they have a reputation for civic engagement (and super high literacy rates I read) but, with all due respect and affection, don't these Iowans have a life?
The wrong person to ask this question was Chris Coleman, a Des Moines city councilor who takes this business seriously and with enthusiasm. He kept his teenage children Maggie and Nick up late on a school night in a bi-partisan campaign tour blitz -- I think I got this right but he told me they visited Fred Thompson's office (Fred wasn't there), to the same rally I was at with Mitt Romney, to Joe Biden's office (Joe wasn't there), to the John Edwards rally and then to see Obama. The one stop he couldn't make ws the Bill and Hillary Clinton show, also in Des Moines. You know your are feeling inadequate as a professional scribe when Joe Citizen out hustles you on the campaign trail.
Coleman plans to caucus for Joe Biden but when I asked what does he hears from his friends and neighbors, he pointed towards Obama. "He's the buzz."
The man with the buzz was working with only one engine of a four-engine voice. It was mostly gone after five stops across the state today and months of campaign abuse. Even if he couldn't raise his hoarse voice very high, the crowd was juiced and the media swarm tagging along was a who's who of the Washington elite (a Tim Russert of the Meet the Press there, a Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and Andrea Mitchell of NBC over there, and a Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and Judy Woodruff of PBS as well) which only adds to the buzz.
It was a different kind of buzz at the Mitt Romney rally which was of a smaller size but pretty juiced up in its own right. Romney strives for the Ronald Reagan style of scripted political storytelling, heavy on the optimism (There's no distress in America that can't be solved without a little effort -- and a good scapegoat to take the blame) and even heavier on inspiring tales of flag, family, faith and values (some 57 varities of values -- Yankee, heartland, midwestern, southern values to name a few Romney mentioned). It's a lullaby routine that can be disarming and Romney looks like a winner -- which for the $20 plus million he's invested here, he'd better get a high return especially when compared to the bargain basement operation and self-inflicted wounds of late of his closest rival Mike Huckabee.
For my money, your best bet for a complete immersion into cognitive dissonance partake in a back to back Republican and Democratic candidate rallies. They might as well be talking about conditions on different planets in far apart solar systems.
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Comments
Thankfully the buzz in Iowa is not about Hillary Clinton. Hopefully Iowans are equal to the task of abandoning Hillary as the Clintons are to the task of abandoning any legal, ethical or moral compass in their quest for power.
The next time your making a “Made in China” purchase at Wal-Mart remember this, without attaching any strings that would impede China’s growth (strings such as protecting the environment or labor and property rights to levels that are comparable to western standards), the Clinton-Gore administration supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) after the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign accepted illegal campaign contributions from Chinese nationals.
Today China is not only a leading contributor to global warming (thank you very much Mr. Nobel Laureate, Al Gore), it is also pushing up oil and other commodity prices, taking our jobs and stealing our intellectual property.
China almost certainly has more dirt on the Clintons and would love to have another Clinton administration in the White House so as to advance China’s dominance even further. Furthermore it was the Clinton-Gore administration’s abandonment of regulatory enforcement that allowed the deceptive market practices which left us with the sub-prime loan crisis, Enron-like corporate scandals and the dot com bubble burst.
Shame on the Clintons for fooling us once. And shame on us if we let them fool us again.
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January 3, 2008 03:54 AM