Fighting Different Battles on Same Soil (Iowa Caucus; Semi-Barfer)

JSOnline ^ | December 22, 2007 | Craig Gilbert

[Diana in Wisconsin]

(In Iowa, Democrats diverge on merits, GOP on policies)

Des Moines, Iowa - Cheered on by chanting union members last week, Democrat John Edwards promised an "epic fight" against America's corporate interests.

Two days later, in front of a far more conservative crowd, Republican Mike Huckabee said his nomination would be a blow against "corporate greed."

The possibility that Big-Money-bashing Southern populists could win in both parties here on Jan. 3 is just one thread in the rich drama of the 2008 Iowa caucuses.

In a Democratic race too tight to predict, Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama scrambled last week to mobilize supporters, capture late deciders and shore up their vulnerabilities before the nation's first nominating contest.

Saddled with higher "negatives" than her rivals, Clinton crisscrossed the state with an entourage of family, old friends and constituents she has served, offering Iowans sometimes emotional testimony about "The Hillary I Know."

Facing questions about his youth and inexperience, Obama staged a foreign policy talkfest the other day with two members of the Clinton administration's diplomatic and security team to vouch for him as a future world leader.

Outspent and often overshadowed by Clinton and Obama, Edwards brought his campaign to a high populist pitch, billing himself as the only one who would wage a frontal assault against the corporate powers he says stand in the way of economic justice and political fairness.

The fact that all three contenders share broadly similar views has made their rivalry less about the policies they're promoting than about their personal and political merits: Who's more prepared? Who can lead? Who can create "real change"? Who can beat the Republicans?

Different kind of fight

Those Republicans, meanwhile, are having a different kind of fight: both nastier and in some ways meatier, because their battle goes to the very soul of their party.

The Republican who has led the national polls, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is at odds with the party's social conservatives over abortion and gay rights. He has been sliding.

The Republican who leads the Iowa polls, Huckabee, is at odds with the party's economic conservatives over his tax record when he governed Arkansas and his populist complaints about international trade, income inequality and big business. He has been soaring.

The onetime Baptist pastor is scoring heavily with evangelical voters here. Speaking last week at a mall near Des Moines, Huckabee said he spoke for the "ordinary" American who worries about "his next paycheck."

"It will be an amazing journey when the White House is occupied by somebody who's not necessarily Ivy League but who everybody else has written off as 'bush league,' somebody who's not the country club Republican but the Boys and Girls Club kind of Republican, somebody who might not be the wine-and-cheese crowd, but who is (with) the crackers-and-cheese crowd," Huckabee said.

An hour later and a few miles away, his chief rival in Iowa, Mitt Romney, held an event of his own, and the contrast could not have been starker. Romney, the wealthy former Massachusetts governor and financial executive, was introduced by the CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman. His message: a classic GOP blend of family values and free-market capitalism. Boasting a war chest and organization far bigger than Huckabee's, Romney provided cookies to a crowd of more than 1,000 at a hotel. Huckabee held his event in a cramped community room at a West Des Moines mall, a space far too small for the interest he is drawing.

Huckabee in spotlight

With Republicans Giuliani and John McCain spending little time in Iowa, Ron Paul raising lots of money but not moving dramatically in the polls and Fred Thompson struggling to revive interest, Huckabee has been the center of media attention here, a package of unpredictable assets and liabilities: funny, self-deprecating, thin-skinned, untested, unscripted, at ease with issues Republicans don't normally lead with (health care, education) and sounding tentative on issues they normally do (foreign policy).

Will he weather the media scrutiny? Can he overcome ads from Romney attacking him as soft on illegal immigration and crime?

Nobody knows, but the Huckabee playbook remains his own. Accused by Romney of granting too many clemencies in Arkansas, Huckabee veered from the law-and-order line typically heard in GOP races. He argued that his clemencies gave a second chance to many minor youthful offenders. And he suggested Romney granted too few clemencies in Massachusetts, saying "the smart political move is always deny every single one of them... (but) I'm going to act in the best interests as if that's your kid out there that has got that application before me."

Closing arguments

The top Democrats have been more cautious about making explicit personal attacks. But their arguments against each other are plain enough. Clinton has portrayed Edwards and Obama as inexperienced and unready for the world stage. Obama has portrayed Clinton and Edwards as familiar faces who've had their shot and can't give the country the fresh political start it needs. And Edwards has portrayed Obama and Clinton as not confrontational and uncompromising enough to defeat the moneyed interests that stand in the way of change.

With time waning, the three spent last week on closing arguments and trying to answer whatever doubts persist among Iowa fence-sitters.

Launching a Web site, www.thehillaryiknow.com, the Clinton campaign arranged in-person testimonials from friends, family and people who've benefited from the senator's intervention, all designed to humanize Clinton's image.

In a barn not far from Des Moines, one New York Republican told the crowd how Clinton arranged his evacuation from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Childhood friend Betsy Ebeling remembered her early leadership role as "captain of the crossing guards."

"Here in Iowa, I want you to have some flavor of who I am outside the television cameras...what I do when nobody's listening or taking notes or recording it, because it's hard when you're in public life to have that kind of sharing experience with thousands or millions of people," said Clinton, who told listeners at one point how she would take off her "really big glasses" in junior high school to attract boys, relying on Ebeling to keep her from blindly bumping into walls.

Trailing the Big 3

Trying to address a very different set of political concerns, Obama brought part of President Clinton's former foreign affairs team to Iowa last Tuesday. In language that could be taken as a knock on Sen. Clinton, onetime national security adviser Anthony Lake lauded Obama for opposing the Iraq war from the outset (not true of Clinton), saying he's "not the kind of leader who takes a poll, sees a parade on some issue and jumps in front of the parade and says, 'Now I'm leading the parade.' "

Said Lake: "This election is in some ways a referendum on whether we have the politics of authenticity or the politics of artificiality."

Lake also noted that Obama would be one year older at the outset of his presidency than Bill Clinton was.

Edwards confronts his own challenges here. He has run third in most of the recent Iowa polling but is seen as running especially strong among past caucus-goers (a good sign in a contest in which turnout matters hugely). His surprise second-place showing four years ago was partly fueled by the endorsement of The Des Moines Register. This time, the newspaper backed Clinton, saying Edwards had abandoned the "optimistic" tone of 2004 and accusing him of "harsh anti-corporate rhetoric" that "would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change."

But Edwards is unapologetic, singling out corporate interests as the No. 1 obstacle to solving America's problems, telling a crowd last Monday that those interests "stand between you and the America you deserve."

His supporters chanted, "No more lobbyists! No more PACs! John's gonna take the White House back."

Other Democrats - Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich - trail the Big Three in the Iowa polls.

But under Iowa's complex caucus system, their supporters' second-choice preference on Jan. 3 could help determine whether Clinton, Obama or Edwards comes out on top.