Osler's Razor

Yesterday, I happened to be in central Iowa (you know how that goes-- sometimes you just can't avoid doing some business in central Iowa). After a little research, I found that Montana Governor and just-announced presidential candidate Steve Bullock was doing a "meet and greet" at Uncle Nancy's Coffeehouse in Newton, Iowa, so I headed over there. My hope was to ask him how he would use the constitutional pardon power (since that is kind of my thing, as you probably know).

Newton is an interesting town, best known as the onetime home of the Maytag Corporation. Maytag moved most of its operations to Mexico, merged with Whirlpool, and then just went away entirely, so this is a community that paid the price of internationalization. I would imagine the appeal of Donald Trump and "America First" would be pretty strong here, though the town does seem to have survived fairly well by diversifying its economy. It was good to see the Hotel Maytag being restored as well, albeit as apartments.

Uncle Nancy's sits on the town square, across from the classic 1911 Jasper County Courthouse. It's not a pretentious place--one poster advertised an upcoming concert by  Dokken-- and there was plenty of room for the 50 or so people who showed up to hear Bullock.

It's no secret that I support Amy Klobuchar in the primary (in fact, I supported her run before she announced it). Bullock seems to be running in the same lane as Klobuchar, and every position he articulated yesterday tracked the points Klobuchar staked out some time ago. He did have an intentional bit of a folksy air to him, which is a little iffy coming from a guy who went to Claremont McKenna and Columbia Law and worked for Steptoe and Johnson.  Of course, that persona was utilized a long time ago by Naval Academy grad and nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter, and I love that guy. Bullock also mentioned "Jasper County" several times, which I suppose is intended to create a bond with the locals ("Hey! Check it out! This guy knows where he is currently located!"). It feels like pandering, and after the fourth or fifth time it was cringe-worthy.

Unfortunately, Bullock didn't take my question. Somewhat suspiciously, he took questions almost exclusively from a group of older folks sitting directly in front of him. Their questions seemed to go to his obvious talking points, and once he was done with them, the guy in the  ethanol-plant workman's vest asking about ethanol, and a guy in a Bullock button asking him to talk about his health plan, he closed down the Q & A. It seemed like an odd amount of question-planting and staging for a crowd of 50 people in a place called "Uncle Nancy's." That level of control did not work out well for Hillary Clinton.

I'm not the first person to observe this, but I think it is an important point that was really apparent as I stood in that room: Iowa is not representative of the United States. There were no black or brown faces at Uncle Nancy's, and I was relatively young among that crowd (and I am 56!). Given the outsized importance of the Iowa caucuses, that is troubling. It would make sense to have the Iowa caucus and South Carolina primary on the same day, to diversify the participants in the winnowing process. 

It was fascinating to see this little sliver of the electoral process. I may come back to Iowa this summer to see some more...