WASHINGTON, 4 January 2007 — People from America’s heartland — Iowa — finally have their opportunity to pick presidential candidates for the two major political parties and chart a new course for the country.
As Arab News went to press, the costliest campaign in the three-decade history of the Iowa caucuses were heading to an unpredictable finish. Thousands of volunteers and campaign aides from across the country descended on neighborhoods and towns to coax voters to 1,781 precinct sites in the state.
The candidates exhibited exhaustion and a bit of desperation — the natural outcome of a presidential campaign that began earlier with more intensity than ever before — but one that has not produced an obvious front-runner on either side.
Campaign money — and the latest polls — have given an edge to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and the Republican’s former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses.
But add a couple hundred thousand Midwesterners, pack them into gyms and libraries and town halls on a frigid Iowa night, add a heaping measure of peer pressure to the equation and, well, anything can happen.
It is said that Democrats fall in love with their candidates; Republicans fall in line. Huckabee is a grass-roots movement candidate, and his conservative Christian faithfuls may still propel him to victory. But former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has got the money, the organization, and the plan.
If so, Romney should have little trouble regaining his footing in the upcoming New Hampshire caucuses. That one-two early-state punch would give him the send-off he needs to overcome South Carolina.
If he can pull off a win in Iowa, Romney will emerge all the stronger for having fended off the Huckabee surge. Before Huckabee, it was hard to say Iowa mattered very much on the GOP side. But now, for Romney, this would have been a real victory against a formidable opponent — and a huge momentum boost heading into his (vacation) home turf of New Hampshire.
Also on the Republican side, Sen. John McCain, Arizona, and former Sen. Fred Thompson, Tennessee, held smaller events around the state until Wednesday night. Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani flew up from Florida, where he has been campaigning, to New Hampshire. Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning dark horse, continued to barrage Iowans with television commercials, spending some of the $18 million he raised, mostly online.
As for the Democrats, no one in presidential campaign history has ever worked a state like John Edwards has worked Iowa. But for a brief hiatus for the 2004 general election, Edwards has been campaigning there nonstop since early 2003. It is said that he’s answered more questions from more voters at more dinners and summer cookouts — in every last corner of the state — than Hillary Clinton and Obama combined.
Finally, there is Edwards’ unspeakable advantage — he is the last white man standing.
As one prominent Democratic strategist said earlier this year: “Obama and Clinton are terrific candidates, but they each represent an untested threshold in American politics. You have to entertain the idea that when Democrats really think about who is going to ensure that the party wins in 2008, a lot of people might get nervous and say, ‘Damn it, we need a good-looking, charismatic white guy.’ I hate to be crass. But that’s bald-faced politics.”
All campaigns indulged in the usual political gymnastics of claiming electoral momentum, while playing down the consequences of defeat and warning that Iowa was just the first milepost in a long process. “We feel good about what we’ve done. But this is the beginning and not the end,” Obama, the freshman senator vying to become the country’s first black president, told ABC television.
Edwards expressed confidence after a last-ditch 36-hour Iowa blitz. “I think my people will be there,” he told MSNBC television. “I think they’re motivated.”
Hillary, the senator and former first lady seeking to become the first woman US president, acknowledged the Iowa outcome hinged on which candidate made the best effort to get out their voters. “I feel good, but you know it depends on who comes tomorrow; who decides to actually put on their coats, warm up their cars and go to the caucuses,” she told CBS.
Meanwhile, Democratic Sens. Joseph Biden, Delaware; Christopher Dodd, Connecticut; and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson continued to campaign vigorously, each hoping for a showing that might give them the momentum they need to stay in the race.
