Rudyard Kipling never would have penned the
opening line of his poem “If” were he in Iowa when the press ballyhoos the
state as “The center of the political universe” — as it does so routinely today.
Kipling begins his celebrated 1895 poem with the
line “If you can keep your
head when all about you (a)re losing theirs….” But that is well nigh impossible
in Iowa in August 2013.
Subjected to the farce that Iowa makes of the
presidential campaign in particular and sanity in general, Kipling would have
returned his pen to its inkwell, forgotten about “If” and possibly seen the
wisdom in Edgar Allan Poe and the line “Nevermore.”
The more Iowa botches its role in the
presidential campaign, the more the press trumpets Iowa’s first-in-the-nation
status as a bellwether, oracle and fount of wisdom. It’s almost insane.
Here we are 27 months from the 2016 election and
we’re in mid-campaign form. Iowa and GOP candidates do dumb things and the
press dutifully records it all; just as the press must have done in rave
reviews of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” — to invoke a third literary giant, Hans
Christian Andersen.
How can one “keep your head” when, like
water-drop torture, these items drip, drip, drip?
• News accounts routinely refer to the need for
candidates to cater to the Republican Party “base.” But, at least in Iowa, the
GOP “base” and “lunatic fringe” are one and the same. The press does not
acknowledge that, although a lot of former Iowa Republicans do.
• One hopeful sign of sanity -- that the Iowa
Straw Poll might be reformed -- has become an absurdity, if not a political
obscenity. The Iowa Straw Poll is a fundraiser held by the Iowa GOP in
August of the year preceding a presidential election. Whichever candidate
contributes the most money to the Iowa GOP is crowned as the front-runner of
the Republican Party presidential nomination. The press embraces this
scam by sagely noting that whoever can commandeer the most yellow school buses
to ferry supporters to the Straw Poll plainly has demonstrated fitness to fill
what Harry S. Truman called “the most important office of government in the
history of the world.” The Straw Poll process resulted in U.S. Rep.
Michele Bachmann winning the crown in 2011.
This spurred efforts toward reform. So who has offered to fill the gap
should the Straw Poll be junked? Well, the Iowa Christian Right says it can
screen candidates even better than the Straw Poll. The organization willing to
do that, the evangelical non-profit Family Leader — which spearheaded the
campaign to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices for recognizing the right to
gay marriage — has the apparent blessing of Republican Gov. Terry Branstad. The
GOP nominee would not be the biggest spender, but would be the one who grovels
best before the GOP “base.”
• The Iowa caucus and campaign process puts the
emphasis not on issues or debate, but rather on who is ahead in the
polls. You see, it’s all a horse race, even though the horse race
approach has long been criticized as a flaw in political news coverage.
So a measure of hope wafted into Iowa recently when the respected, but now
retired, Associated Press political reporter Mike Glover created a website to
offer some needed and solid insights and substance to the caucus folly.
His website? http://www.iowahorserace.com.
How do you “keep your head” amidst all this and
still worse to come — even if you are in the center of the political universe?
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