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Follow us on TwitterLike many local elected officials in the Hawkeye State, Linda Langston, chairwoman of the Linn County Board of Supervisors, had a front row seat for the fledgling days of a spectacularly intense presidential campaign that ends Tuesday.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama speaks at a rally in Des Moines last Friday.
Langston, a Democrat, scouted the full field, arguably the deepest ever for her party in terms of resumes and star quality, before picking U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as her candidate — a choice she made during a ride to the Cedar Rapids airport with Obama amid discussions of the state’s understated beauty.
She saw something within Obama that helped her to make what was a personal decision to support the first-term senator.
“As we were talking, we just became four people,” Langston said. “At that moment in time what I saw was that Senator Obama still had a piece of his humanity. Running for president and all the challenge and hoopla can really put you into a very unusual atmosphere.
“It can change you. I had at that moment, and I continue to have, a sense of Obama as a person. That’s also certainly true with (his wife) Michelle. There is a humanity that still exists within that family that has not been subverted by running for president.”
It’s that unflappable quality and connection to people that Langston believes helped Obama win the nomination.
John McCain speaks to a crowd in Le Mars during the Iowa caucuses. Immigration dominated that forum in northwest Iowa.
While insiders spent time recently thinking about what has made Obama’s campaign successful, most talk of the McCain campaign was more about its missteps than its successes.
Many see McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running-mate as a turning point in the election.
Former GOP gubernatorial candidate David Oman, a top staffer for Iowa’s last two Republican governors, says McCain would have been better served by picking former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
“I’ve thought a handful of times the past month that he would have helped, perhaps a lot, in energizing GOP base, appealing to folks deeply troubled by downturn and so-called bailout, and in several southern and border states now close,” Oman said.
He said that Palin has not benefited the Republican ticket.
“Look at the [Des Moines Register] Iowa Poll breakouts with 60 percent of people feeling she is not qualified to assume the presidency,” Oman said. “Huckabee would have passed that test. Romney, too, though he would have cemented many peoples’ classic impressions of the GOP brand — wealth — and probably not turned around a single state, including Michigan.”
Oman said that if Obama is elected Tuesday he will have to remember where his journey initially received traction.
“It wasn’t in Pennsylvania, or many other states,” Oman said. “It was in Iowa, first. Lack of success here followed by second in New Hampshire would have shut down his campaign for the nomination.”
Oman said Obama clearly will have higher priorities that need to be addressed before he can focus on a more specifically rural agenda.
“I suspect Obama will focus first on the mega problems of the economy, energy, and health care, not to mention national security with or without the incident [VP nominee Joe] Biden forecasted,” Oman said.
Former Iowa Democratic Party chairman Mike Peterson, now an executive with AT&T in St. Louis, Mo., says at this point, it seems as if the presidential race is all about margin of victory.
“I will be surprised if Obama receives fewer than 350 electoral votes,” Peterson said.
Peterson said he still believes that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty would have made a stronger running mate for McCain than Palin.
In terms of governing following the election, Peterson said an Obama win is good for rural Iowa.
“I am told that Obama’s first legislative package will be an infrastructure bill,” Peterson said. “Iowa’s seniority should be a plus there.”
Veteran Iowa writer Chuck Offenburger runs a popular Web site and churns out prolific articles for a variety of publications from a renovated farmhouse outside of Cooper in Greene County. He sees Obama as a stronger leader for rural Iowa than McCain.
“Rural Iowa will fare much better under Obama than it would have under McCain,” Offenburger, a Republican, said. “Obama understands the Midwest. He understands agriculture and what a huge role ag will play in the new energy era. And he will never forget the huge role Iowans played in enabling his candidacy.”
On the eve of the election State Rep. Tom Schueller, D-Maquoketa, recalled the early days of the Iowa caucuses when he was receiving call after call from candidates.
“I supported Joe Biden in the caucus,” Schueller said. “I thought he would have done better. To be honest with you, I really blame the media for that. They picked up on who they thought was the front-runners and that’s who ended up being the front runners. The other ones didn’t get hardly an honorable mention. Those folks — Biden, (New Mexico Gov, Bill) Richardson and (Connecticut Sen. Chris) Dodd — had a lot of good things to say too.”
Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in Lexington, Ky., puts it flatly.
“I see no chance for McCain,” Cross said. “Hindsight is always 20/20. Romney would have brought the base around, though not stimulated crowds and volunteers like Palin. He would have been viewed as qualified, and could have probably made more coherent arguments than McCain, so the election would have been closer.
“But this is all a parlor game because McCain wasn’t about to pick someone he couldn’t get along with, and I agree with that approach. You have to think about governing, not just winning. Obama did that with Biden, an example of his better judgment.”
Down in southern Iowa, State Sen. Jeff Angelo, R-Creston, says McCain has a chance when one looks at the internals in a lot of the state polls.
“Right now, both the Democratic base and the Republican base are fired up,” Angelo said. “So you assume in a record turnout that the bases are cancelling each other — sorta like my wife and I — you then look at the number among if McCain can swing some of them and the undecideds in the battleground states, he pulls out the electoral win. Obama was hoping for a blowout based on the participation of new and infrequent voters — but early returns indicate that the early voters are mostly the same voters who always vote early.”
Angelo said McCain’s selection of Palin brought passion to base and delivered a middle-class relevancy.
There is a reason that “Joe The Plumber” became a central figure in this campaign, Angelo said.
“With Palin and Joe’s involvement, McCain got his campaign groove back by realizing that there are a large group of middle class voters who didn’t believe their concerns were being addressed in the campaign,” Angelo said. “Romney doesn’t have that power to harness the energy of those voters and get them to the polls. Palin does. She’s ‘one of us.’ In short, I don’t think the race is close without Palin.”
Sarah Palin at a recent rally in Sioux City.
Offenburger thinks McCain’s problem wasn’t in choosing Palin, but in shackling her to a script and cocooning a natural campaigner.
“Let me admit that I still think Palin was a good choice, especially given where the McCain campaign was in August” Offenburger said “And that leads me to what I think is the biggest mistake McCain made — letting his campaign staff mismanage Palin from the moment she said ‘yes.’ They should have let her talk one-on-one to every reporter, columnist and broadcaster who wanted to talk, instead of packaging her up for those huge exclusive interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric — under the glare of the brightest lights and widest audiences imaginable. That was unfair to Palin.
“If the rest of the press corps had been getting frequent access to her immediately, one-on-one and in small gatherings, she would’ve learned quickly to relax and be herself. I think she would have then shown people the knowledge, ability, personality and savviness that have helped her become governor of a huge, complex and important state. By the way, I think she would do very well in the kind of retail politics that the Iowa caucuses require.”
For his part, Schueller said Obama has picked a running mate who understands the middle class.
“Look at how he gets to work everyday and look at what he’s done since he’s been there,” Schueller said. “Second of all, Obama has some Midwest roots, being from Illinois and all. So, he’s going to understand our needs a little better than McCain ever would or could. And he’s going to have a better grasp of agriculture than McCain ever would or could. That’s been reflected in Obama’s campaigning. McCain’s record reflects what he thinks about ethanol, renewable energy and so-forth.”
Langston said she knew McCain was in trouble when she saw him speak during the caucus campaign season at a Cedar Rapids Rotary Club meeting.
“That’s a rather large group of over 200 significant business people,” Langston said. “Really, [McCain’s] presentation was not good. By my estimation, it was appallingly bad. While the campaign was talking about having no money, they came into the meeting with drapes and curtains and tele-prompters. I thought, ‘Oh my.’ I mean if you can’t stand up in front of an Iowa Rotary and give a speech without all of this.”
