I started my research believing in the success of Roosevelt’s economic-recovery programs. To support this claim, I spent hours at the Carnegie Library in Denison reading past editions of the local, biweekly newspaper.

My reading began with the 1929 stock-market crash, and I examined every issue through the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Those stacks of old papers turned upside down everything I had been taught in history and government class about the New Deal. As I searched for information proving the New Deal stabilized the American economy, I instead found the exact opposite: high unemployment, a struggling stock market and continued hard times.

Later statistical findings confirm my 11th-grade research. Throughout the 1930s, the unemployment rate never dipped below 14 percent. FDR’s tinkering with the free market frustrated investors, and the 1929 high point for the Dow Jones industrial average was not reached again until 1954.

While few economists and historians deny that the entire period in American history from 1929 to 1941 saw plenty of hardship, most will admit that answering a question like “Did the New Deal cause the end of the Great Depression?” is incredibly difficult.

And trying to answer a question like, “Was it the New Deal that ended the crisis, or was it World War II?” is pretty much impossible, since we will never be able to create controls for each variable and run tests in a real-world environment.

Still, most economists are convinced that the New Deal was at least part of the reason why the Great Depression ended.  The high unemployment rate during the New Deal that King cites — roughly 14 percent at its lowest point — was relatively low when compared to unemployment rates from earlier in the depression.

As liberal commentator (and Oxford Ph.D.) Rachel Maddow notes in the video below, the unemployment rate was 25 percent in 1933, so bringing it down to 14 percent could be considered a success for the New Deal.

For a good roundup of the New Deal revisionism that many Republicans in Congress have embraced, check out this piece in the Washington Independent.

Leonard Boswell and Ed Fallon? Nope. Hop in the Wayback Machine and set the dial to 1970, when Republican incumbent Fred Schwengel and challenger David Stanley faced off in Iowa’s last primary challenge to a congressional incumbent — nearly 40 years ago.

David Stanley, 1968

David Stanley is better known in this century for his leadership of the conservative group Iowans for Tax Relief than for his U.S House and Senate bids. Schwengel, who died in 1993, is the name behind the Mississippi River Bridge on Interstate 80. But in 1970, the two faced off in what was then numbered the 1st Congressional District.

Schwengel won that June 1970 contest, with 56 percent to Stanley’s 44 percent. Stanley carried the counties in his old legislative district, Muscatine and Louisa. The race was studied by University of Iowa political scientists Donald Johnson and James Gibson, who published an article in the March 1974 edition of the American Political Science Review that called the race a classic example of “the divisive primary.”

Like Boswell, Schwengel had only one loss on his electoral record, in a heavily partisan year. In the Republican watershed year of 1994 Boswell, then a state senator, was the lieutenant governor running mate on Bonnie Campbell’s losing ticket. He came back from that loss to win his Congressional seat in 1996. Fred Schwengel, first elected to Congress in 1954 after a decade representing Davenport in the state legislature, lost his seat to Democrat John Schmidhauser in the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964. He then came back to beat Schmidhauser in a 1966 rematch.

David Stanley, like Ed Fallon, raised his profile by giving up his legislative seat and losing a statewide race. In Fallon’s case, it was the 2006 gubernatorial primary, where he finished third but won a surprisingly strong 26 percent, and actually won the area that makes up the 3rd Congressional District where he’s running now. Stanley lost a 1968 U.S. Senate race to Harold Hughes, but came within 5,000 votes — 1/2 of 1 percent — of upsetting the popular sitting Democratic governor.

Stanley’s Muscatine-based legislative district, like the turf Fallon represented in inner-city Des Moines from 1993 to 2006, was safe for his party. Stanley served in the state House from 1959 to 1964 and moved to the state Senate for one term. He won that state senate race with 60% in the Democratic landslide year of 1964. With a safe seat, a candidate can take positions that excite activists who vote in primaries, rather than compiling a middle-of-the-road record that draws moderate votes in general elections.

Fred Schwengel, 1970
“Schwengel, 63, ran as an experienced and moderate legislator who, as a member of the Committee on Public Works, had been attentive to his constituents and their needs,” wrote Johnson and Gibson. “Stanley, 42, campaigned vigorously from house to house and in frequent professionally made television announcements. He stressed his own state legislative record and invariably charged that Schwengel was insufficiently regular as a Republican — that his party unity score was lowest among all of Iowa’s congressmen.”

Stanley’s charges are echoed today by Fallon, who argues that Boswell’s voting record, particularly his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war, is too conservative for a Democrat. But in one key difference between the 1970 race and this year’s contest, Boswell has hurled the party loyalty issue back at Fallon, citing his 2000 support for Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader over Democrat Al Gore.

Another difference between the 1970 battle and this year’s contest is that only one party has a primary contest in 2008. Democrats know that either Boswell or Fallon’s Republican opponent in November will be former congressional staffer Kim Schmett. But in 1970, 1st District Democrats also had a spirited primary. State representative Ed Mezvinsky, an attorney and consumer advocate, prevailed over anti-Vietnam War professor William Albrecht and law-and-order sheriff William “Blackie” Strout. Mezvinsky’s campaign featured distinctive ads showing voters butchering his name that later became literally textbook examples of name-ID ads.

Johnson and Gibson surveyed activists in both parties before the primary and again just before the November general election. They found that most established Republican activists had backed incumbent Schwengel, just as the establishment of the Democratic Party is backing Boswell this year. In their post-primary study, they found that 60 percent of the respondents who backed primary losers intended to vote split tickets in the fall, compared to only 31 percent of the activists who had backed winners Schwengel and Mezvinsky. “There was no intensive or comprehensive effort made by the winners to recruit people who had been active for the opposition in the primary,” wrote Johnson and Gibson. “Only a few, possibly no more than three to five, Stanley workers volunteered to work in the Schwengel campaign; most of those who continued their political work did shift to other campaigns.”

While Schwengel prevailed over Mezvinsky in November 1970, Mezvinsky came back and finally ended Schwengel’s career in 1972. Schwengel went on to serve as U.S. Capitol historian before his death in 1993.

Before founding Iowans for Tax Relief in 1978, Stanley returned to the state House for one term in 1972, and lost another close U.S. Senate race, this time to John Culver, in 1974.

The Minnesota author was in Iowa City on Monday to read from her new book, “The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir.”Background: A so-called “Secret War” was being waged by the CIA in Laos and Cambodia during the more public Vietnam War. In 1975, when the U.S. withdrew its military forces from Vietnam, the “Secret War” in Laos was also abandoned.

Why the secret? In 1962, a Geneva Accord was signed that forbade U.S. troop presence in Laos. To circumvent the agreement, the CIA was ordered to train and support an army of people known as the Hmong.

The secret Hmong army in Laos has since been largely forgotten by the U.S. government, but more than 100,000 Hmong people were killed. Their systematic persecution continues today in Laos.

Originally they lived in the mountainous jungles of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. After the war, many fled to refugee camps and eventually made their way to the U.S., France and Australia.

Today about half of Hmong immigrants in the U.S. live in the Midwest.

Before Kao Kalia Yang was born, her family crossed the Mekong River to the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. At age 6, Yang and her immediate family immigrated to St. Paul, Minn.

By age 12, Yang was teaching English as a second language to adults. She continues to teach at colleges and universities. With her mother and sister, she runs a writing and translation business, Words Wanted, in St. Paul.

“The Latehomecomer” started as a series of love letters to her grandmother, who was the family leader and a shamanistic healer. Her spirit permeates much of Yang’s writing.

The book is filled with her family’s stories, scenes from the refugee camp where she was born, the move to America and growing up in Minnesota.

She said she began her life in English “on the page,” meaning that her first storytelling wasn’t spoken, but written.

In this video, Yang talks about her grandmother and writing her first book:

Yang was at Prairie Lights Bookstore for a reading on Monday night. Her book is available from Coffee House Press.

Seventy-five years ago, corn was fetching less than 10 cents a bushel and pork was at three cents a pound. A migrant class of American workers was being created. These were the desperate times of the 1930s known as the Great Depression.

And just like today, mortgage foreclosures were taking land and homes away from citizens.In Iowa, angry mobs violently fought judicial decisions that foreclosed their farms. Just 55 days after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration, a group of farmers in northwest Iowa angrily shook the foundations of civilized law when they seized Plymouth County District Judge Charles Bradley from his courtroom, dragged him outside to the courthouse lawn and punched, kicked and slapped him.

The mob, part of the Farmer’s Holiday Association, had been organized the previous year to protest the dire financial situation that was ruining family farms throughout the nation. At their first meeting on May 3, 1932, some 3,000 farmers met to form the bloc.

The “holiday” officially called for a farmer’s strike of withholding produce for sale. They sang:

  Let’s call a Farmers’ Holiday
  A Holiday let’s hold
  We’ll eat our wheat and ham and eggs
  And let them eat their gold.

The association’s leader, Milo Reno, called the strike “the last stand of American agriculture in defense of their rights and their homes.” He claimed the United States had found itself in “the most amazing and confounding situation in the history of the world — people starving in a land with an abundance of food; naked, because of a surplus of clothing; people bankrupt in the richest nation in the world.”

Roads were blocked and fresh milk dumped into ditches during 1932’s infamous “Cow Wars” (also known as the “Milk Wars”) outside Sioux City and Council Bluffs.

In September of that year, the Farmer’s Holiday movement prescribed actions in Tipton to block veterinarians from diagnosing bovine tuberculosis and condemning animals.

With a foreclosure moratorium law in February 1933, the Iowa Legislature attempted to calm violence in rural Iowa by stopping banks from foreclosing on farms unable to cover their mortgages.

The constitutionality of that law was to be challenged in Judge Bradley’s court in Le Mars on that day, April 27, 1933. But before he could hear any arguments, he was charged by more than 100 men in his courtroom.

According to accounts from “A Judge and a Rope” (by George Mills, 1994), “A History of Iowa” (by Leland L. Sage, 1979) and the Chicago Tribune (in the days following the event), Bradley was dragged from the Plymouth County courthouse and refused repeated demands to ignore foreclosure edicts. He was surrounded by an angry and violent mob.

In that public square, he was struck in the face and fell to his knees. The crowd demanded that he agree to stop signing foreclosures, but he refused to disobey his office.

Roughly, the judge was hauled by the mob into the back of a truck and blindfolded. The crowd would be thinned by a change of locale, but unfortunately for the judge, the terror was multiplied.

Dumped a half-mile outside of town, he had a noose placed around his neck. The rope was tossed over an electric light pole, tightened and for an instant the judge was lifted off the ground by his neck.

Again he was asked not to sign foreclosures on farms and this time when he refused his pants were removed, smeared with grease and filled with dirt and gravel.

The 54-year-old judge was crowned with a greasy hubcap and told to get on his knees and pray. Aloud he prayed, “Oh, Lord, I pray thee, do justice to all men.”

Miraculously, this brave prayer seemed to break the will of the mob, and some of the masked men who held the rope got in a car and drove away.

While walking back to town, he was picked up by Rev. J.J. Depree who drove the judge the rest of the way back to town. Judge Charles Bradley escaped with only minor injuries and the need for a wash-up and a change of clothes.

Dr. Thomas Starzl, son of Le Mars Globe Post editor Roman Starzl, was only 7 years old at the time of the almost-lynching. His father was a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and wrote front-page accounts of the incident for the Trib.

In recalling the incident, Starzl told the Iowa Independent:

“The farmers were on a rampage because they couldn’t get properly paid for milk and for their meat from pigs they were raising, so they had gone on a rampage … They were pouring all their milk out and they had vigilantes on all the roads around Le Mars and any scabs trying to break through and sell the milk had to be roughed up.”

After the incident, Gov. Clyde Herring sent hundreds of troops to quell the farm strikes in Le Mars and Denison. Martial law was imposed in several counties until May 17, only five days after the enactment of the New Deal farm bill, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). Considered the first farm bill, the AAA paid farmers a subsidy to leave their fields empty.

Starzl again:

“There was a huge National Guard encampment and the city was put under martial law. I remember that extremely distinctly because I had toy soldiers and there were these real soldiers running around with real guns. I was 7 years old.

What was going on was mortgage closings just the same as going on today and ruthless people were coming along buying up these farms for pennies.

This was a dangerous time in this country. It was a dangerous time in Le Mars because it was the center of a real revolt … It was a real uprising.”

Today, the crossroads where Judge Bradley was brutalized is now a housing addition named in his honor by the real estate developer.

Starzl is widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of organ transplantation. The University of Pittsburgh has named the Thomas Starzl Transplantation Institute in his honor and he remains one of the most cited physicians in the world. Now retired, he lives in Pittsburgh, Pa.

They can, actually.

Let’s hop in the Wayback Machine and travel to 1836, when one political party had not two, but three presidential candidates.The Whig Party, which has the second funniest name of any dead political party just behind the Know-Nothing Party, was just in the process of forming around the basic ideology of hating President Andrew Jackson and dodging the slavery issue. The Democrats, perhaps persuaded by Jackson’s track record of dueling with people he had disputes with, quickly settled on Vice President Martin Van Buren. But the Whigs were split between General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and Senator Hugh White of Tennessee.

So they nominated all of them.

Quick Electoral College 101: We regular folks don’t vote for president. We vote for presidential electors, and they vote for president. In almost every state it’s a winner take all system. That’s how it was in 1836, that’s how it is now.

The Whig strategy in 1836 was to win a majority of electoral votes by running each candidate in the region he was strongest. Webster represented the party in New England, Harrison (pictured) ran in what was then called the Northwest and White was the candidate in the South. If between the three of them they could manage to win more than half the electoral votes, they could either consolidate behind one candidate, or throw the election into the House of Representatives if they preferred. It had only been twelve years since a four-way presidential election had produced an Electoral College deadlock that had been settled by the House, so it wasn’t an unthinkable strategy.

It was a compromise; the Whigs were big on compromises. But it was an unsuccessful strategy, as Van Buren and the Democrats won a clear Electoral College majority. The experiment served as a sort of 1840 Whig national primary, as Harrison became the de facto front-runner by getting more electoral votes than Webster or White. We all know the rest: the economy tanked in the Panic of 1837 (recessions had more dramatic names back then), Harrison won in the Tippecanoe and Tyler Too campaign of 1840, and gave a really long inaugural speech in the rain. Next year, William Henry Harrison dollar coins will be minted for three times longer than he actually served as president.

Could such a strategy work today?  No, not dying after a month in office, I mean running different candidates in different states. Since candidates file with each state, there’s really not a legal barrier. The barriers would be more political. Would the public stand for the shenanigans?  Maybe not, with the grumbling about popular vote in the primaries and the role of the superdelegates. But then, just eight years ago a president was sworn in with fewer votes than his opponent, thanks to the 18th century wonders of the Electoral College, and the streets did not flow with the blood of the nonbelievers.

A March 6 Survey USA series of polls showed both Obama and Clinton leading John McCain in the Electoral College. Obama beats McCain 280 electoral votes to 258, while Clinton defeats McCain 276 to 262. But the patterns are quite different. Obama loses some border states that Clinton wins, but does better in the Great Plains and Rockies. One of those Great Plains states is Iowa, where McCain beats Clinton but loses to Obama.

Let’s suspend our disbelief and assume that the Democrats deadlock and come up with a mashup candidate as a compromise: Barack Rodham Obama, or Hillary Hussein Clinton. Time to play with maps and numbers.

First let’s look at the primary results, a familiar map to anyone who’s been watching election coverage.

Obama is in green and Clinton in orange, with the yet to vote states in gray and calendar cheaters Michigan and Florida in black.

Now let’s look at which candidate runs stronger in a general election against McCain according to Survey USA.

In this map, the gray states indicate Clinton and Obama run within two points of each other. This is a similar map, but not identical. In a few Deep South states where Obama easily won primaries, Clinton runs just as well as he does; probably one set of votes trading off for another. And interestingly, Obama runs better than Clinton in Texas.

Now let’s see what happens if the Democrats adopt the 1836 Whig strategy and run the stronger candidate in each state.

It’s not a squeaker anymore — it’s a landslide, 341 electoral votes for the two Democrats vs. 173 for McCain, with Tennessee and Virginia too close to call (see data table below). Obama even picks up two electoral votes from Nebraska, one of the two states that split their electoral votes by congressional district.

Then they settle it with a deal in the smoke-free room, or if that fails, they can settle it the way Andrew Jackson settled his disputes. They’d still be eligible to hold office in Iowa, thanks to the 1992 dueling amendment. Just remember: if it’s raining on Inauguration Day, cut the speech short.

Survey USA, 3/6/08: McCain vs. Stronger Democrat by State

State	McCain	Dems	Electoral Vote		stronger Dem	Primary Winner
			McCain	Dems
Alabama	51%	41%	9		Clinton	Obama
Alaska	48%	43%	3		Obama	Obama
Arizona	51%	39%	10		Obama	Clinton
Arkansas	40%	51%		6	Clinton (Obama loses)	Clinton
California	40%	51%		55	Obama	Clinton
Colorado	41%	50%		9	Obama (Clinton loses)	Obama
Connecticut	34%	55%		7	Obama	Obama
Delaware	41%	50%		3	Obama	Obama
Florida	42%	51%		27	Clinton (Obama loses)	depends
Georgia	54%	41%	15		Obama	Obama
Hawaii	31%	61%	0	4	Obama	Obama
Idaho	52%	39%	4		Obama	Obama
Illinois	31%	60%	0	21	Obama	Obama
Indiana	50%	41%	11		Obama	-
Iowa	41%	50%		7	Obama (Clinton loses)	Obama
Kansas	50%	42%	6		Clinton	Obama
Kentucky	50%	41%	8		Clinton	-
Louisiana	51%	41%	9		Clinton	Obama
Maine	39%	53%		4	Obama	Obama
Maryland	40%	53%		10	Obama	Obama
Massachusetts	37%	55%		12	Clinton	Clinton
Michigan	44%	46%		17	Obama (Clinton loses)	depends
Minnesota	42%	49%		10	Obama	Obama
Mississippi	51%	42%	6		Clinton	Obama
Missouri	48%	44%	11		Clinton	Obama
Montana	47%	39%	3		Obama	-
Nebraska	45%	42%	3	2	Obama (wins 2 of 3 districts)	Obama
Nevada	41%	46%		5	Obama (Clinton loses)	Clinton (Obama won delegates)
New Hampshire	44%	46%		4	Obama (Clinton loses)	Clinton
New Jersey	42%	47%		15	Clinton (Obama loses)	Clinton
New Mexico	43%	50%		5	Obama	Clinton
New York	33%	55%		31	Clinton	Clinton
North Carolina	47%	45%	15		Obama	-
North Dakota	42%	46%		3	Obama (Clinton loses)	Obama
Ohio	40%	50%		20	same	Clinton
Oklahoma	50%	42%	7		Clinton	Clinton
Oregon	41%	49%		7	Obama (Clinton loses)	-
Pennsylvania	46%	47%		21	Clinton (Obama loses)	-
Rhode Island	37%	54%		4	Clinton	Clinton
South Carolina	48%	45%	8		Obama	Obama
South Dakota	47%	43%	3		Obama	-
Tennessee	46%	46%	tie	tie	Clinton (ties, Obama loses)	Clinton
Texas	47%	46%	34		Obama	Clinton (Obama won delegates)
Utah	50%	39%	5		Obama	Obama
Vermont	29%	63%		3	Obama	Obama
Virginia	47%	47%	tie	tie	Obama (ties, Clinton loses)	Obama
Washington	38%	52%		11	Obama (Clinton loses)	Obama
West Virginia	42%	47%		5	Clinton (Obama loses)	-
Wisconsin	40%	51%		10	Obama	Obama
Wyoming	54%	35%	3		Obama	Obama
District of Columbia	not polled	-		3	Obama	Obama
Total			173	341	24 tied	-

]]> http://iowaindependent.com/2103/should-dems-split-nomination-like-1836-whigs/feed 0 http://iowaindependent.com/1538/jon-kyls-rise-and-iowas-wane http://iowaindependent.com/1538/jon-kyls-rise-and-iowas-wane#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:00:00 +0000 John Deeth http://iowaindependent.com/1538/jon-kyls-rise-and-iowas-wane In a few days, U.S. Senate Republicans will officially anoint Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona to replace Trent Lott of Mississippi as minority whip, the number two post in the Senate GOP leadership.  A few Iowans will recall that Senator Kyl’s father, John Kyl (same name, different spelling) was an Iowa congressman.  But in a way, you could argue that Jon Kyl cost his father his seat in Congress.

No, there wasn’t some adolescent scandal in Bloomfield, Iowa.  But the story of the Kyl family is, in microcosm, the story of Iowa’s declining political influence as the American people, including a young Jon Kyl, have moved south and west.The elder John Kyl was one of Iowa’s first television personalities at KTVO in Ottumwa.  He lost his first congressional bid in 1958 to Steven Carter, the first Democrat to win the 4th District in south central Iowa district in decades.  But less than a year later Carter was dead, and John Kyl won Iowa’s last (to date) congressional special election. 

Iowa’s glory days in the House of Representatives were the late 1890s, when we elected eleven congressmen, all Republicans, including Speaker of the House David Henderson.  By 1959, when John Kyl was elected, Iowa was down to eight U.S. House members while Arizona, still a rural, ranchy state, had only two.  That shifted to seven from Iowa and three from Arizona in 1962. 

The elder Kyl was first a victim of Arizona in 1964, when Barry Goldwater led the GOP to a crushing defeat and Kyl lost to Democrat Bert Bandstra.  Kyl beat Bandstra and made a return trip to Congress two years later.  They don’t make landslides like those anymore: five Iowa Republican incumbents knocked off in 1964, four first term Iowa Democrats beaten in `66.  (The only surviving freshman: John Culver.)

But despite his return, John Kyl’s days were numbered by the southward and westward migration of the American people — including his own son.

Jon Kyl graduated from Bloomfield High School in 1960, just months after his father went to Congress.  Jon went to the University of Arizona for college — and didn’t come back, settling in for law school and then a job at a Phoenix law firm.

As the refrigerated metropolis in the desert grew, Iowa shrank.  The 1970 census, which officially counted Jon Kyl’s move from Bloomfield to Phoenix, took yet another House seat away from Iowa and gave it, again, to Arizona.  Seven congressmen don’t divide evenly into six districts, and John Kyl drew the short straw.  His new district added both Democratic colleague Neal Smith and Smith’s Polk County base.  That trumped John Kyl’s Ottumwa-Bloomfield turf, and Smith beat Kyl easily in 1972.

When the younger Jon Kyl was first elected to the House in 1986, Arizona had five House members to Iowa’s six.  Then, in 1992, it happened again: Arizona gained its sixth seat and Iowa elected only five House members — the fewest since the Civil War.  Jon Kyl moved to the Senate in 1994. 

Iowa held its own in the 2000 census, but is expected to lose a House district in 2010.  But Arizona gained enough population that in 2002, it elected eight House members.  By that year, the elder John Kyl had joined his son in Arizona, and late that year he died in Phoenix.

The Des Moines fundraising event is long since sold out, but you can probably score a ticket from a campaign for the small price of a signed pledge card.  Campaigns scoop up tickets, haul in supporters, and engage in the usual sign wars and other such one-upmanship, as JJ kicks off the end game of caucus season.

In addition to the Big Six – the batting order is Edwards, Richardson, Biden, Dodd, Clinton and Obama — attendees will hear from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Iowans Senator Tom Harkin, Governor Chet Culver, Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge and Congressman Leonard Boswell.

The old attendance record of 7,500 was set four years ago.  JJ 2003 was, in retrospect, the high-water mark for the Howard Dean movement.  Dean hauled 37 busloads of supporters (which broke Dick Gephardt’s 1987 record) from a pre-dinner rally at the Des Moines Public School’s Central Campus to Vet’s Auditorium. 

Dean very pointedly entered the dinner through the crowd when introduced, rather than walking down the designated dignitary walkway like the other candidates did.  Another Dean moment drew a lot of attention: one Deaniac passed out at the pre-rally and Dr. Dean provided medical care until the EMT’s arrived.

But echoes of the future were in the air — literally, as the John Kerry campaign launched a blimp toward the rafters to unveil their then-new slogan “The Real Deal.”  John Edwards had a blimp, too, and the two circled each other in a dogfight for what then looked like third place.  In a then-rare trip to Iowa, Hillary Clinton emceed the dinner and introduced — or overshadowed — the candidates.  Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton skipped the night.  (Hey, wasn’t Al Sharpton way more fun in the debate comic relief role than Mike Gravel?  Best line: “Hey, Howard, if I’d have spent all that money in Iowa and come in third, I’d be yelling too.”)  Carole Moseley-Braun made one of her only Iowa stops at JJ; she dropped out and endorsed Dean days before the caucuses.  Dennis Kucinich was spending a lot more time on the ground in Iowa in 2003 and was on hand; not so this time.

The atmosphere was very different at the 1991 dinner.  Only about 1,000 people attended.  With Tom Harkin running for president, the other candidates showed up but skipped the usual effort to pack the hall with supporters, as most of the party regulars who attend events of this sort were in the Harkin camp.  An ice storm depressed turnout even more.  Interstate 80 was closed in eastern Iowa, but a group of foolhardy University Democrats and I (covering the event for public radio) found open back roads and listened to the day’s big news, the death of Queen singer Freddie Mercury from the AIDS that he’s only disclosed the day before. 

We arrived just as leadoff speaker Jerry Brown was starting.  JJ `91 was the only Iowa caucus stop for Bill Clinton, and one of the last campaign events period for Doug Wilder of Virginia, who dropped out before any votes were cast.  Harkin was in his element — a partisan atmosphere, the local boy playing in the big leagues — and the vast majority of the crowd was in his corner waving blue and white signs. 

Paul Tsongas had the unenviable task of speaking last, just after Harkin.  I’d pre-arranged an interview for just after his speech and he met me, as agreed, near a coat rack in the lobby.  I monopolized Tsongas for about ten minutes, knowing he wouldn’t be back before the caucuses and this was my last chance.  He patiently and thoroughly answered all my questions, and then we shook hands.  As I said “Thank you, Senator,” I turned around and saw a national crew from ABC News standing behind me.  Tsongas could see them while I was interviewing him, yet he’d given the local public radio guy from a rival’s home state that he’d already written off a full interview while he kept the network TV crew waiting.  One of the classiest things I ever saw.

Last year saw the biggest non-caucus JJ.  3,500 people showed up at Hy-Vee Hall to see Bill Clinton.  Clinton 42 made only a couple brief references to his spouse, but HILLARY 2008 signs were everywhere outside the hall as supporters promoted her as yet unannounced candidacy.  Leading with a disclaimer, the ex-president urged Democrats to “forget about 2008″ and concentrate on the 2006 election, then only three weeks away.  In an unusual arrangement, the big speaker went first rather than last, and Chet Culver capped off the evening.  His predecessor Tom Vilsack got bigger cheers after Culver spoke when he announced Chet’s 46-39 lead over Jim Nussle in the Iowa Poll set to be published in the next morning’s Des Moines Register.  (That one panned out, but Denise O’Brien’s 19 point lead in the Secretary of Agriculture races vanished by Election Day.)

Keynote speakers in non-caucus years included Joe Biden in 2000 and two Democrats fresh off defeats: Al Gore in 2001 and Tom Daschle in 2005.  Al Franken, then just a funny guy but now a U.S. Senate candidate, spoke in 2004.  The 1993 dinner featured a tribute to two of the founding fathers of the modern Iowa Democratic Party.  Former senator John Culver spoke first, but the highlight was the peel the paint off the walls oratory from former governor and senator Harold Hughes, making one of his last Iowa speeches before his death three years later.

But the true sign of doom seems to be looooooong Senate service. No candidate has ever – and I mean back to George Washington ever — turned a long career in the Senate into the Presidency. The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who tried. John Kerry and Bob Dole got nominations. But other men who are widely respected elder statesmen in DC have failed miserably in the chat and chews of Iowa: Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch, Ernest Hollings, Alan Cranston, even back to Ed Muskie and Henry Jackson. Ted Kennedy’s 18 years of Senate experience at the time he ran for President in 1980 dwarfed his older brother’s eight.

Of course, Dan Quayle learned the hard lesson about comparing one’s experience to JFK, and Ted gave himself the added challenge of trying to oust an incumbent of his own party. But none of this bodes well for Joe Biden’s ears of experience or Chris Dodd’s white hair.

Four years ago, writing in Reason, Jonathan Rausch proposed the “Law of 14″:

With only one exception since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, no one has been elected president who took more than 14 years to climb from his first major elective office to election as either president or vice president.

Rauch defines “major office” as a Congressional seat, governor, or big city mayor. “The rule is a maximum, not a minimum. Generals and other famous personages can go straight to the top. But if a politician first runs for some other major office, the 14-year clock starts ticking.”  Those aren’t ears of experience — they’re stale milk cartons.Looking to the Hall of Presidents, soon to appear on dollar coins near you, we see:

President	First Major Office	Year	Shelf life
Bush 43	Governor	1994	6
Clinton 42	Governor	1978	14
Bush 41	House	1966	14 (to VP)
Reagan	Governor	1966	14
Carter	Governor	1970	6
Nixon	House	1946	6 (to VP)
Kennedy	House	1946	14
Johnson	House	1937	23 (to VP)
Eisenhower	President	1952	0
Truman	Senator	1934	10 (to VP)
Roosevelt	Governor	1928	4
Hoover	Cabinet	1921	8	="middle">
Coolidge	Governor	1918	2 (to VP)
Harding	Senator	1914	6
Wilson	Governor	1910	2
Taft	Cabinet	1904	4
T. Roosevelt	Governor	1898	2 (to VP)

(Note: I included cabinet posts for Taft and Hoover, whose first elected office was the Presidency, but either way they’re under 14.)

Even the one exception helps prove the rule. LBJ lost the 1960 nomination to fresher face JFK, then got the vice presidency as a consolation prize because they needed to win Texas really, really bad.

Where’s Gerald Ford on our roll call? Down below. With the losers. His decades in Congress were no match for that Jimmy Carter grin.

Loser	First Major Office	Year	Shelf life
Kerry	Senate	1984	20
Gore	House	1976	16
Dole	House	1960	26
Dukakis	Governor	1974	14
Mondale	Senate	1964	12 (to VP)
Ford	House	1948	27 (to VP)
McGovern	House	1956	16
Humphrey	Senate	1948	16 (to VP)	ight="25">
	Mayor	1945	19

Fast forwarding to the present, this significantly narrows our field of potential winners. Oh, not nominees – the gallery of the defeated will show you that, and for recommended reading on those men, find yourself a used copy of the long out of print “They Also Ran” by Irving Stone, a wonderful collection of biographies of the defeated candidates.

Note that on the Democratic side, the freshest faces are the leaders, and while Richardson cites his gubernatorial credentials, his House tenure could cause some problems.

Candidate	First Major Office	Year	Shelf life
Obama	Senate	2004	4
Clinton 44	Senate	2000	8
Edwards	Senate	1998	10
Richardson	House	1982	26
Kucinich	Mayor	1977	31
Dodd	House	1974	34
Biden	Senate	1972	36
Gravel	Senate	1968	40

It’s yet to be determined: if First Lady constitutes a “major office.” (These sorts of rules can always be tweaked retroactively.)

On the GOP side, again note the rough correlation between freshness and success, though Tancredo messes with that a bit. And Rudy Giuliani is getting to the edge of his sell-by date.

Candidate	First Major Office	Year	Shelf life
Romney	Governor	2002	6
Tancredo	House	1998	10
Huckabee	Governor	1996	12
F Thompson	Senate	1994	14
Brownback	House	1994	14
Giuliani	Mayor	1993	15
T. Thompson	Governor	1986	22
McCain	House	1982	26
Hunter	House	1982	26	er="0" src="http://home.mchsi.com/~jdeeth/milk.gif" width="18" height="25">
Paul	House	1976	32

The really funny thing, though, is that Ron Paul, supposedly the “fresh” face on the GOP side, was actually the first of the Republican contenders to win an election, back in the disco era.

Of course, a year from now the Law of 14 could be as useful as the Washington Redskins Rule. Used to be if the Redskins won their last home game before the election, the GOP would win, but if they lost it was a Democratic year. This made me feel even more glee than usual when my Green Bay Packers beat the Redskins in October 2004, but it didn’t help John Kerry a bit. (Perhaps because Kerry famously called the Packers’ stadium, Lambeau Field, “Lambert” field while campaigning in Green Bay.)

But perhaps the Law of 14 reflects a certain reality.  Foreign service officers and the higher ranks of the military have "up or out" rules: you either get promoted in a certain time frame or you’re gone.  Maybe that’s an unwritten political rule as well.

And maybe more substantial reasons will cause the American people to kill off the Law of 14. After all, George Bush took office twice over the more experienced candidate, and look what happened.