Caucus '08 - The Set-Up

I don't know if I fully agree with elements of the national media that the Iowa Caucus is an affront to democracy and, at the very least, byzantine and arcane.

For examples, see The Slice of the Sliver Speaks, The Iowa Scam, or Wait For New Hampshire by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens, and Washington Post veteran David Broder respectively.

One surreal aspect of the Iowa Caucuses for me is that you can read dispatches from Slate's chief political correspondent that include Iowa City stops at the venerable Hamburg Inn No. 2 and anecdotes about getting lost on the way to an event at Marshalltown High School (my alma mater).

Ultimately, I think everyone is served. The national press is able to breathlessly hype the process and wax poetic about the candidates facing the voters in intimate settings such as community centers and town libraries. Then they can turn around and trash the process as over-hyped and undemocratic.

Iowa can be happy for the attention while tiring fully of the interminable and oftentimes indistinguishable political ads. By this late stage, we're looking for something more familiar and authentic like, for example, herbicide commercials.

New Hampshire can feel superior because their process is more transparent and less beholden to the extreme elements of either party. They, after all, hold the first PRIMARY. But the Granite State can also hold an understated sense of aggrievement at all the attention gained by a pack of fools criss-crossing the prairie.

All the while, somehow, someway, the Republic will survive.

But I may change my mind about all of this because this year I'll be participating for the first time. Actually, not yet old enough to vote, I attended the Republican caucus in 1988 as an observer. But my experience there was limited generally to witnessing a bunch of old people filling into classrooms in Miller Middle School and a burst of conspiratorial excitement when my friends and I discovered our Social Studies teacher as a participant. This was notable because he had sensibly refused to declare any political allegiances during the course of his teachings.

So I had the impulse to participate this year but, with Jessica working, what would I do with the kids? This, of course, is one of the criticisms of the caucuses. You need to free a specific two-hour block which can be be problematic if you work second shift or need to worry about child care. But then I saw media reports that the campaigns were offering to provide child care. It seems the catering to special interests starts early in the process. One hand, as they say, washes the other.

I contacted the Obama campaign through their web site around 3:30-4:00 yesterday afternoon. At 1:58 AM this morning, I received a reply via e-mail from the Obama caucus night operations manager at my precinct indicating that child care would be available on-site. One curiosity is that the manager's e-mail address is from the indiana.edu domain. An Iowan on a distant but temporary tour-of-duty or an out of state interloper!? We shall see.

Tonight, the kids and I step into the breech.

I'm Fired Up and I'm Ready to Go!!!