The Folks with First Say
Not since that patter-perfect trombone salesman, Professor Harold Hill, arrived in River City to organize a boys' band has Iowa seen a confidence game this audacious. But where The Music Man set out to hoodwink the locals, this time the tables are turned: Iowa has pulled off a sting on the rest of the nation. Who could have imagined that Iowa of all places could create a $20 million winter tourist industry? This is, after all, a state where the weather is so fierce that Des Moines had to construct a latticework of skywalks to shield shoppers from the wind chill. Here is a state that, though the highest elevation is 1,670 ft., has found a way to lure city slickers away from the ski slopes of New Hampshire. The secret, of course, is the tribal ritual known as the Iowa caucuses, that moment in presidential politics when the snowblower finally hits the driveway.
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On the night of Feb. 8, while most Americans are sensibly warming themselves from the glow of TV tubes, upwards of 200,000 Iowans will brave the harsh elements to attend political meetings in 2,943 precincts across the state. Their ostensible purpose is to pick delegates to attend obscure county conventions in March, but the results will be heralded in 76-trombone fashion as the first referendum on the 1988 field. In one of American democracy's strangest eccentricities, these 200,000 dutiful citizens from an atypical prairie and river-soil state could have far more say in sorting out the presidential contenders than anyone else.
Even so, there will be few of the familiar trappings of democracy: no polling booths, no official ballots issued by the state and, for the Democrats, not even a shred of secrecy about each participant's vote. Confusion, even chaos, is likely. In years past, there have never been fully accurate tallies of exactly who the Iowa caucus attendees supported. But like compulsive gamblers playing with a 47-card deck, the press and conventional wisdom makers will somehow manage to anoint winners, belittle losers and quickly rejigger the odds for the Feb. 16 New Hampshire primary and beyond. In a year with no cutting issues or commanding front runners, Iowa looms larger than ever as it gets ready to bless one Republican and one Democrat with the elusive "Big Mo."
Three weeks before the caucuses, Iowans are still reluctant to pledge their troth or even go steady. A TIME poll of voters who say they are likely to attend a caucus found that only 34% of the Republicans and 36% of the Democrats were firm in their allegiance to a specific candidate. Even the Republican race, dominated by George Bush and Bob Dole, remains difficult to handicap. "There is a very large group of Republicans still undecided, maybe 40%," says George Wittgraf, the Bush campaign's Iowa coordinator. "That doesn't show up in surveys that are 'screened' for caucus attenders."
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