WP: New Wind in Iowa
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, December 11, 2007; Page A21
DES MOINES -- It is 1,134 miles and 53 years since Jerome Schlicter, a teacher, walked into my eighth-grade classroom and held up the New York Times. The headline read "High Court Bans School Segregation," and it ran clear across the top of the page in skyscraper letters. It was very rare to see such a headline, Schlicter told us, and we sat, the boys in ties, the girls in dresses, feeling somehow a part of history ourselves. I had that same feeling the other day. The event was the joint appearance of Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama at the Hy-Vee Hall here before an estimated 18,500 people, the vast majority of them -- the very vast majority of them -- white. They screamed first for Michelle Obama, incredibly slim and very stylish, and then -- louder, much louder -- for Oprah and then, as if it were not possible, in equal decibels for Obama, youthful, trim, sleek, a Mercury carrying an important message: himself.
You could look up at the stage, at the immense crowd, and marvel at it all. Here in the heartland of a nation founded on the twin principles of freedom and slavery, here in the middle of an America once so racist that blacks in the South could not even try on shoes before buying them, was the most powerful media personality of our times, a black woman. Next to her stood the possible Democratic presidential nominee, a black man. And to the audience none of that mattered. Or so it seemed.
History, like light itself, is unfelt. You could have asked some Florentine during the Renaissance what it was like to live in the Renaissance -- wow, Leonardo and Michelangelo! -- and he would have been puzzled. The Renaissance? This is the Renaissance? It is the same now, and the wonder of Obama, the wonder of Oprah -- two African Americans who have managed to uncouple "African" from "American" -- is hardly even noticed. Jerry Schlicter would not have believed it.
At the moment, the prudent would call the Iowa race a dead heat -- Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards all plus-or-minus within the statistical margin of error. But it is Obama who is gaining in the latest polls, Clinton who is slipping and Edwards, who has durable strength here, who is merely treading water. Hillary, too, is a historic figure -- former first lady, current U.S. senator and the first really serious female presidential candidate. Yet somehow she has become the personification of the status quo, a stale establishment figure. Obama has Oprah; Hillary gets Barbra Streisand. One is today. The other is yesterday. The Iowa caucuses put a premium on organization -- just getting your people out on what is usually a very cold night. Only a sliver of the eligibles actually participate, and while I make no prediction, I can say with absolute certainty that most of those who came out on a lethally cold day over the weekend to see Oprah and Obama will stay home on caucus night.
Still, there is no doubt that the zeitgeist whispers the name Obama, that he electrified the crowd here with a strong, passionate speech and that it was impossible, if not historically irresponsible, to look at that platform -- three African Americans -- and at the immense and mostly white crowd and not feel that something big was happening....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/10/AR2007121001561.html?nav=most_emailed 
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