"Give 'em hell, Howard" may be our best chance to throw Bush overboard.
JONATHAN VALANIA (jvalania@philadelphiaweekly.com)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN PETTITT
DES MOINES, Iowa -- They say God gave Iowans the power to choose who will be the next president as a consolation prize for a life of corn farming and Wal-Mart shopping.
Like New Hampshire, Iowa is a bellwether state, a land of good old-fashioned horse sense where the wheat is separated from the chaff, a litmus test for whether a candidacy will play in Peoria. Out here in the nation's breadbasket, the bones of presidential woulda-beens are scattered across the prairie. On Jan. 19, when Iowa holds its caucus, the pretenders will fold their tents and the front runners will be flung slingshot-style into the gaping maw of the national electorate, to be spit out sourly or swallowed whole.
And so every four years at around this time--some eight months before the March primaries and a little more than a year before the general election--the candidates roll up their sleeves, fill up the gas tank and start crisscrossing the state. They trundle across the blue highways and unpaved byways, down backcountry roads in a flurry of balloons and bunting, shaking hands and kissing babies, looking under every haystack and behind every grain silo for voters willing to hear their pitch.
The Iowa caucus is a remarkable miniature of the national election. It is democracy unbound from the pomp and deal-making of the Beltway and writ small in the diners, barbershops and general stores of towns with populations under 2,500--sleepy Norman Rockwellesque backwaters with names like Holstein, Sac City, Ottumwa and Oskaloosa. Stand in the center square of any one of these towns and look due east. About a thousand miles away lies the White House. As history has proven time and time again: You can get there from here.
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