The Folks with First Say

(6 of 9)
Even the leading Republicans have learned to soft-pedal hawkish rhetoric in Iowa. Bush's first Iowa TV ad, aired last month, stressed his strong support for the President's INF treaty with the Soviet Union. Similarly, no epithet hurled by the Bush campaign has irked Dole more than the label "Senator Straddle" for his awkward stutter-step on the INF treaty.

In terms of the presidential caucuses, there are, in effect, two Iowas. Big Iowa -- the state of 2.8 million people and 1.5 million registered voters -- is almost irrelevant, except as a scenic backdrop for campaign commercials and TV sound bites. All that matters is Little Iowa, a mythical state with a population smaller than Alaska's, a tiny political universe of roughly 110,000 Republicans and 100,000 Democrats likely to attend the caucuses on a cold Monday night in February. The rub, of course, is that the residents of Little Iowa are inconveniently sprinkled across the 55,941 sq. mi. of Big Iowa, indistinguishable from their neighbors by any characteristics save their political commitment and, perhaps, the presence of their name on a campaign's canvass list.

In Iowa, organization is a fancy name for having the right lists and enough people to call them. Aside from Gore and Alexander Haig, who have hoisted the white flag, and Hart and Jackson, who are depending on name recognition and serendipity, the other nine campaigns are following roughly the same strategy: identify your supporters, woo the uncommitted, and make certain to get out your hard-core vote on Feb. 8. Caucus night for the Republicans is generally a well-ordered affair. But Democrats, characteristically, must labor under the heavy burdens of participatory democracy run amok. Caucuses frequently last beyond midnight, as participants debate policy resolutions and try to comply with the party's arcane threshold requirements, which demand that a candidate win 15% support to garner any delegates.

Television ads are a notoriously inefficient way to reach Little Iowa, because most of the message and money is squandered on nonparticipants. Still, all major players in the state have made heavy media buys, though Bush has carefully hoarded his ammunition for the climactic final days. The ads currently running on Iowa TV are revealing, particularly for what they say ! about each candidate's strategy as the campaign moves into the final weeks. Confidence is the implicit message conveyed by Dole and Simon: their commercials are vague and thematic, presumably designed to do little more than solidify inchoate support. Robertson has perfected a different kind of soft sell, speaking directly into the camera without props or backdrop, glossing over his TV-preacher past and ending with the soothing words, "I'm not asking for your vote. I'm just asking you to listen."