Empowerment and Togetherness Mark Saturday’s Heartland Presidential Forum

The Heartland Presidential Forum was not a typical Iowa presidential campaign event.  Buses poured in from several other states, and there was plenty of audience participation.  But this time, no campaign could call foul over the mix of Iowans and out-of-staters, because it was all part of the plan formulated by the forum’s sponsors, including Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and several allied groups.

In the eyes of most of the event’s attendees, the characteristics that made the event different from other multi-candidate appearances were a breath of fresh air.  The organizers’ goal was not to maximize the amount of talking time each candidate received by keeping questions short and answers long; it was to force candidates to listen to average Americans’ stories and respond.

In short, it was meant to entrench a feeling of empowerment in the audience more than it was meant to make any sort of news.  Community organizers from around the country, who often feel as if politicians do not take their concerns seriously, had a chance to watch their peers tell their stories to a national audience while presidential candidates empathized with them as best they could.  The event’s motivational impact on its audience may have been more important than its effect on the presidential campaign.  For the event’s organizers, that should make it an unqualified success.

But from a political journalist’s perspective, nothing about the event fit easily into a horserace story.The questions, while passionate and occasionally heart-wrenching, were repetitive and, in terms of substance, fairly predictable.  Most candidates were asked if they support a path to legalization for immigrants who are currently in the United States illegally.  Most were asked about health care.  Most were asked about confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and local control.

The answers each candidate gave were also strikingly similar, in substance if not in style.  That meant that when reporters filed their stories, they were left with few headlines to choose from.  Most chose to lead with the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was forced by inclement weather and the previous day’s hostage situation in New Hampshire to address the crowd by phone rather than in person, received boos for an answer she gave to an immigration question.

While that may have been the most interesting part of the afternoon, it was not all it has been cracked up to be.  Clinton, who did not have the benefit of looking her audience in the eyes while she spoke, gave an answer that looks almost exactly the same on paper as everyone else’s: a path to earned legalization is important, but only as part of comprehensive immigration reform that secures the borders and penalizes employers for hiring undocumented workers (and getting there could take some time, as everyone knows).

When she got booed, it was more for her delivery than for her policy position.  One couldn’t help but wonder whether, had she addressed the audience in person rather than by phone, she would have received the same response.  Her answer was clumsy, but it wasn’t very different from anyone else’s.

If there was a candidate who appeared to receive more applause from the audience than the rest, it was Sen. Barack Obama.  This, of course, should not come as a surprise: many of the buses brought in by the event’s organizers came from Chicago.  Those groups gave Obama a standing ovation when he walked in.  No one can accuse Obama’s campaign of packing the room, because campaigns had little control over who ended up there; but the Illinois senator lucked out.  And Obama’s background as a community organizer didn’t hurt, either.

That said, every candidate received plenty of applause — even Clinton, despite the negative press coverage.

In short, Saturday’s Heartland Presidential Forum was likely a positive, motivating experience for everyone who attended.  That one candidate got booed for one answer should not eclipse what was otherwise nothing short of a diverse and inspiring love-fest.