Here's a crazy thought: Iowa needs to keep the caucuses

By Jeff Orvis

The final countdown is underway. By this time next week, barring some sort of tragedy, “Iowa” will no longer be the top national story. TV network correspondents who think they're entitled to hazardous duty pay when they have to venture out of Manhattan can go back to confusing Iowa with Idaho.

In a recent moment of engaging the fingers before the brain, I referred to Iowa's caucus experience as the “Republican Comedy Tour.” Seems some folks are taking this whole thing seriously and my Facebook post was probably unfortunate. But it came on a day when one of the lower level candidates made one of her famous gaffes and was called on it by one of her opponents. Then a veteran CNN reporter interviewed Ron Paul and tried to get him to admit he still believed some statements that were attributed to him 20 years ago. She asked the same question over and over and finally Paul had enough and walked away.

That's what I meant when I referred this whole exercise as a comedy tour. I have no doubt that the declared candidates for the Republican presidential nomination are sincere. I'm sure those tour buses that many of them have been using the past few weeks are nice, but some of them would much rather be back on a Tiffany's spending spree or sitting back sipping a cold drink in their penthouse apartments or estates. Instead, they are out here with members of the 99 percent, pressing the flesh and drinking coffee in small town cafes.

There has been the suggestion that if some candidate emerges from the bushes and surprises the so-called experts and wins next week's caucus, Iowa will become irrelevant in the process. Some have even suggested that we could lose our first in the nation designation. As much as I detest hearing all of those tasteless smear campaign ads on TV and as much as thousands of voters would rather not be bothered by robo-calls every night at the dinner hour, I hope we will still retain our spot in the process.

It takes an obscene amount of money to mount a presidential campaign. Both major parties are equally guilty in the amount they spend. It is said that the Obama campaign might raise as much as $1 billion for next year's race and he isn't even facing any opposition from his own party! As long as all that money is floating around out there, why shouldn't Iowa businesses continue to get their fair share? It takes cash to fuel those buses, house and feed the candidates and their staffs, make those annoying phone calls and send out that blizzard of campaign propaganda. In this economy, every little bit helps.

If you listen closely to the claims of the various candidates, you have to laugh (at least you should). It seems like every one of them is claiming to be more conservative than the next guy. Some of us may not agree that being labeled a “conservative” is necessarily a good thing. I'm currently reading the autobiography of former Vice President Walter Mondale, who makes a solid argument for responsible liberalism in government. With the help of a bull-headed Texas president and a cooperative Congress, many battles were won over conservative Republican and Democrats to greatly decrease discrimination and increase opportunities for young people and seniors in this country a generation ago.

Not all liberals want to freely spend government money with no regard for the national debt. But a lot of us know that you often have to spend money to make money, saying “yes” to some proposals while also asking “how are you going to pay for this?”

When I was still employed as a small town weekly newspaper editor, I had the honor of meeting and interviewing several state and national politicians. I've had breakfast with former governor and current secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack, interviewed past and current Gov. Terry Branstad several times, had several interesting talks with Sen. Chuck Grassley, as well as congressmen Leonard Boswell, Jim Nussle and Steve King. While I definitely agreed with some of them more than others, I respected the offices they represented and the opportunity to meet them for one-on-one interviews, something many of my colleagues in larger cities would die for.

The 2008 presidential campaign gave me the highest thrill of any of my many interviews when Mondale stopped by Belle Plaine on one snowy Saturday morning in support of then-candidate Hillary Clinton. About a half-dozen of us sat around a table at the Lincoln Cafe discussing current national affairs and past history with a man who was on a first-name basis with several presidents, who represented this country honorably as a senator, vice president and later as an ambassador. He once had a Secret Service detail and a flock of aides with him at all times. But on this particular day, he arrived with one guy who served as his driver and clock-watcher.

That's what is so important about this caucus process. If you have any faith remaining that voters matter, that money is still only one component to a successful campaign, then just maybe the eventual winner will remember that person in small-town Iowa or New Hampshire who related his or her life story.

It was once inferred that President Ronald Reagan had a tough time dealing with the problem of poverty in this nation. The saying went that if he met a man who was down and out on the street, he would give him the shirt off his back. He was a compassionate guy who may have remembered some of the folks he met during the early days of the campaign. He just couldn't grasp fact that thousands were in similar situations around the country at that time.

Yes, the caucus process is often fuel for late night TV comedy monologues. It is frustrating at times. But it may be the last way those of us who aren't frequent visitors to our nation's capital will have a personal connection with those who will make the monumental decisions that affect all of us.