Saint Barack of Iowa
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Saint Barack of Iowa The Democratic contest comes down to Hope versus Muscle BY STEPHEN F. HAYES Des Moines, Iowa At 10:15 P.M. last Tuesday night, Barack Obama was gazing vacantly out the...
...This is the kind of overstatement often generated by an exciting day on the campaign trail...
...But as he stood under the bright lights at the University of Iowa, he gave no hint that he was as exhausted as he would appear when he fi nally made it to his hotel...
...A Classroom Corps, of course...
...Since Kucinich is unlikely to be viable, the lawyer’s second choice will be particularly important...
...And if Barack Obama wins Iowa, he may well give the major address at the Democratic National Convention this year...
...A “Social Investment Fund Network...
...When Obama fi nally turns to substance, he speaks with an authority his limited experience would suggest he hasn’t earned...
...That means you can’t undermine U.S...
...I have been for months on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks,” she said...
...Obama supporters will tell you that their man, too, has been building an impressive (“unprecedented” is a favorite word) ground operation...
...Government can solve every problem, just not quickly...
...He wants to be above politics...
...And Oprah...
...In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate, and, in 2004, to the U.S...
...And Oprah...
...Farm workers, factory workers, busboys at restaurants—you know, who pose such a severe threat to public safety...
...He speaks of the importance of parental involvement in education before listing the many ways in which he would expand the role of the federal government in the schools...
...And what about the environment...
...And Obama is running from above...
...And so we’ve got to have a system where we are placing big penalties on employers and creating a tamper-proof system to verify someone’s employment status...
...And later, at Wartburg College, a young boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, asks: “How are you going to stop, like, immigration and all that stuff that’s happening right now...
...Obama’s Secret Service detail held the elevator for him and moments later he was gone...
...He acknowledges “a tradition of gun ownership in this country that can be respected,” and says that his academic studies convinced him gun ownership “is an individual right and not just the right of a militia...
...Two weeks ago, she hired 100 new staffers in the state...
...What else...
...I haven’t had this kind of hope since the days of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King,” he says...
...At each site, supporters of the various candidates form groups and separate themselves from the rest of the crowd...
...Obama’s message of idealism naturally appeals to younger voters, and his looks—a cross between Denzel Washington and Alfred E. Neuman—make him look like one of them...
...He worked with the Kennedys and walked alongside King...
...Starting an assault on each other is unfortunate...
...Hillary Clinton is running from the center,” says Dennis Goldford, a Drake University political scientist...
...I’m sorry that she’s taken that tack,” he says...
...The students look at one another and nod their heads with approval...
...Right now it’s among Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama...
...Wofford, for one, thinks the attacks won’t help her...
...Obama returned to Chicago to practice law and teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago...
...But Wofford is qualifi ed to make it...
...I spoke to a lawyer from Des Moines whose fi rst choice is Dennis Kucinich...
...During the course of the Bush administration, when you average it out, you were more likely to be struck by lightning than to be prosecuted for hiring undocumented workers...
...I’m coming back to caucus,” says Zoe Sigman, a freshman at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa...
...But what it does mean is we have to have patrols, we have to have surveillance...
...Even his partisan comments did not sound partisan...
...The 17-minute speech showcased a young man who was poised, but not slick...
...Fear of terrorism, fear of immigration, fear of gay people—we don’t need a politics of fear, we need a politics of hope...
...For example, I think the impact of parents and communities is at least as signifi cant as the amount of money that’s put into education...
...At a designated time, participants are invited to speak on behalf of their candidate and to urge others to join...
...When a student asks Obama for his views on the Second Amendment, he reminds his audience that he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and is thus familiar with the arguments regarding the right to bear arms...
...And how will people know about all of these opportunities to get paid for volunteering...
...Frontrunners do not typically launch direct attacks...
...It is a revealing answer, for while Obama eventually settles on the mainstream liberal position—path to citizenship, crack down on employers, don’t punish the workers— he does so only after acknowledging (and in some cases, embracing) the concerns of conservatives...
...He’s touched my soul...
...So they should be punished...
...It looks increasingly as if the Democratic contest might come down to a battle of Hope vs...
...You’re going to learn English...
...When a reporter asked if she was suggesting that Obama has character problems, she responded: “It’s beginning to look a lot like that...
...It means—they’ve broken the law...
...Later, when she asked for an example of an issue on which he had changed his mind, Obama said, “I’m probably more humble now about the speed with which government programs can solve every problem...
...And no one understands this better than Clinton herself...
...You’re going to go to the back of the line and cannot get citizenship before people who have been waiting legally to get into this country...
...It is controversial...
...At ten, he returned to Hawaii and lived with his maternal grandparents...
...Obama then spoke of 34 students who were killed on the streets of Chicago and called for sensible gun control to prevent senseless death...
...So, right on with a liberal arts education,” he says, with a mock fi st pump to accentuate “right on...
...Obama’s message of idealism naturally appeals to younger voters, and his looks—a cross between Denzel Washington and Alfred E. Neuman—make him look like one of them...
...EMILY’s List, the Washington-based liberal advocacy group, is also planning extensive get-out-the-vote efforts on Clinton’s behalf...
...I want to talk about the future...
...opinionated, but not dogmatic...
...This is crucial: A candidate must have the support of 15 percent of those gathered at that caucus in order to be considered “viable...
...And as he made his way through the lobby, willing one foot in front of the other, he even summoned enough strength for a wave to the three people working at the front desk...
...Edwards is too insincere...
...Obama often seems to favor more government, even if his own campaign proposals do not refl ect it...
...3.5 million...
...Senate...
...Harris Wofford, the former Pennsylvania senator who endorsed Obama in Iowa last week, says he hasn’t seen such an uplifting leader for decades...
...They’re trying to gain a political advantage...
...Iowa is a state in which negative attacks rarely prove effective...
...We have—it’s estimated, but we have 12 million illegal workers in the country...
...At the University of Iowa, he joked that students would not have anything better to do on January 3 as their Hawkeyes will not be playing in a bowl game that night...
...The politics of fear says we’re going to wrap them up, no amnesty, throw them back...
...They separated when Obama was two and Obama’s father eventually returned to Kenya...
...Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins...
...He had energy to spare and delivered a lively and animated performance...
...That primarily doesn’t mean physical barriers—we’re not going to build a wall along the 2,700-mile border...
...Perhaps sensing his overstatement, Obama tried to recover with a conservativesounding non sequitur...
...The themes Obama laid out in his convention speech still feature prominently in his campaign rhetoric...
...If you do not do it there, odds are you never will anywhere”) has noted this...
...Obama is picking up steam in other important early states...
...We will withdraw from Iraq in 16 months, he promises, and fi ght al Qaeda in Afghanistan...
...I don’t want to talk about fear,” he bellowed into a handheld microphone, gesturing with an authority that matched his outrage...
...This is where “the stuff” comes in...
...He took his shots at Republicans and praised John Kerry, but those passages were short and quickly forgotten...
...That’s just talk...
...He begins by criticizing George W. Bush on immigration from the right and says that his fi rst priority in ending illegal immigration would be securing the borders...
...If they’ve already made their decision not to support Hillary, they’re much more likely to move to Obama...
...So the issue is not one of effectiveness, but effi ciency...
...Don’t ask how the state’s convention delegates are ultimately chosen...
...But he did it...
...And two recent surveys in South Carolina have Clinton leading Obama by just two percentage points...
...JFK not only called on a new generation, he made their service a bridge to the developing world, and a bright light of American values in the darkest days of the Cold War...
...And oftentimes they’re motivated by greed...
...Although the former fi rst lady intensifi ed her attacks on him over the past week, Obama has largely chosen to ignore her...
...Obama is too inexperienced...
...They’ve broken the law...
...he said, not worried that one of those he was addressing was a woman...
...Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us—the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of “anything goes...
...And we have to take that seriously...
...That’s just talk that doesn’t solve problems...
...The caucuses work in an unusual way...
...And by the way, we also have to control the 40 percent of immigrants who come in legally and overstay their visas...
...Number one: We have to have stronger border security...
...If Barack Obama is to have any chance at winning the Democratic nomination for president, he must beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa...
...This, of course, is precisely what Obama wants Iowa voters to think and why he often speaks in front of a large blue banner that reads: “Change We Can Believe In...
...John Edwards is running from the left...
...He uses an index card to make sure he gets names right but otherwise speaks without notes...
...For us to round up every single undocumented worker in the country we’d have to devote every single law enforcement resource we have...
...The expression on his face suggested he was pondering a very serious question: How am I going to fi nd the energy to make it to my room...
...Which means we have to monitor that more effectively...
...Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, to a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas...
...How many Iowa voters, having chosen not to support Hillary Clinton as their fi rst candidate, are going to choose her as their second...
...It doesn’t matter...
...And on the fl oor of the convention that night, many Democrats lamented that they did not have an inspirational fi gure like Obama to challenge George W. Bush and the Republicans...
...Because the only thing police would be doing would be rounding up people...
...Then last week she unleashed a torrent of harsh attacks on Obama and oddly announced to voters that she would enjoy getting nasty...
...The everpopular talk show hostess—with more than 7 million viewers daily—will be traveling to the early primary states on behalf of Obama, hoping to enlist her admirers in his cause...
...Everyone from Obama’s wife (“Iowa will make the difference...
...He acknowledges, characteristically, that we are at war, but then does little to explain how he proposes to win...
...Most Americans fi rst came to know him during that year when, as a candidate virtually assured of becoming the third black American elected to the Senate since Reconstruction, he was invited to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention...
...Two polls in New Hampshire show him gaining on Clinton...
...If he does not meet that threshold, his supporters join the group of their second choice...
...Obama moved to Chicago where, as he’s fond of noting in his campaign speeches, he began his dedication to community and public service by working for $12,000 a year (plus car expenses) to help displaced steelworkers on the city’s South Side...
...His answers almost always include precisely the right mix of policy wonkery (“I know enough to be your president”) and small talk (“I’m cool enough to be your friend...
...Before Grinnell, he had participated in a two-hour debate on National Public Radio...
...Aside from a “strike force” ready to take them out, we are left to wonder...
...Still, of the three, he prefers Obama...
...In one of his few references to Hillary Clinton on the stump—like almost all of the others, indirect—he says: “I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years refi ghting the same fi ghts that we had in the 1990s...
...What are we going to do with the 12 million people who are here...
...How’s it going, guys...
...That’s point number one...
...I don’t blame the worker from Mexico who’s making two dollars a day for coming here and trying to make $5 an hour...
...So when people say “Deport ’em,” they’re not being honest...
...The other subject that gets little attention from Obama on the campaign trail is Hillary Clinton...
...But the employer—what they’re doing is they’re undercutting American labor...
...But if you do all those things then you’ve got a possibility of becoming a legal resident and ultimately a citizen of this country...
...We have a real problem with immigration in this country...
...Mostly, Obama thinks America will be stronger when she is more respected, and she will be more respected when she is more engaged...
...At each stop, he began his remarks with process...
...He may be correct...
...For Democrats, the common theme is change, and nobody represents change like Obama...
...When a student at Cornell asks him for his views on the value of a liberal arts education, Obama starts with a joke (I went to a liberal arts college and look at me now) and then spends several minutes on the pedagogical advantages of the liberal arts...
...It was College Week, as Obama participated in town halls at two Iowa schools and gave speeches at four others...
...AFSCME plans to spend more than $1 million boosting Clinton on television...
...Sigman, whose dark hair features prominent blonde streaks and who wears black fi ngernail polish, says that she will drive the four hours from Chicago back to campus to support Obama...
...After three years, he enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he went on to serve as the fi rst black president of the Law Review...
...And the media criticism of Clinton since she fi rst took a more aggressive posture has been considerable...
...Ask John McCain if it’s important to list border security fi rst when detailing your solution...
...And she insists that many out-of-state students will do the same...
...A Des Moines Register Iowa Poll of likely Democratic caucus goers taken in late November found that 28 percent favored Obama, 25 percent Clinton, and 23 percent John Edwards...
...At Cornell College, Obama spoke of personal responsibility before unveiling a series of New Deal-lite programs to address the “nation’s most pressing challenges...
...But he was not fi nished...
...Students will be away on winter break during the caucuses...
...Thousands of young people surrounded him as he explained why he should be president of the United States...
...But there is a problem with his popularity amongst this age group...
...He fi nishes where he started...
...We’d have to stop prosecuting regular crimes like auto theft or burglary...
...Obama’s inexperience is actually the fl ip side of a positive quality: He is fresh, and voters believe that he is more likely to bring real change to Washington than the other two senators...
...He does not explain the simultaneous growth of al Qaeda and multilateralism in the 1990s...
...The ever-popular talk show hostess—with more than 7 million viewers daily—will be traveling to the early primary states on behalf of Obama, hoping to enlist her admirers in his cause...
...So second choices—and maybe even third—will be huge...
...And that’s not fair...
...It’s not helpful...
...The only thing we’d be using our jails for would be locking up people...
...Once we have strong border security and serious employer sanctions, then we’ve got to get those 12 million people out of the shadows and that means giving them a pathway to legalization...
...At 1,784 precincts throughout the state, Iowans gather to discuss and then select their candidates...
...Obama overshadowed everyone who spoke from the podium that week, including Kerry...
...At each stop, he tells them to caucus in their Iowa hometowns or if they are from out of state to come back...
...And if we do those things we will have a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants and those are both traditions of ours...
...We agreed that I would not use his name because, well, would you want your name used if you supported Dennis Kucinich...
...If you’re starting from scratch,” he told the New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar, “then a single-payer system would probably make sense...
...And we don’t have to betray either of those traditions...
...In fact several lines were repeated verbatim in the stump speech he was delivering during the middle of last week...
...National polls still show Clinton with bigger leads—doubledigit—but the growing Obama momentum appears there, too...
...But Clinton does have several distinct advantages going into the fi nal weeks of the campaign in Iowa...
...He thanked his precinct captains, often by name, and then provided a thorough tutorial on the Iowa caucuses...
...But you know what...
...How would we solve problems in education...
...Now, here’s the third step, which may be controversial...
...He sounds like a man who knows what he’s talking about and knows what he wants to do...
...He also began writing the memoir that became Dreams from My Father, a critically acclaimed examination of his ancestry, his early life (including teenage drug use), and the role of race in America...
...But Hillary Clinton is no longer the Democratic frontrunner, at least in Iowa...
...But Obama supporters believe they have a built-in advantage because of the way things happen in Iowa...
...That is not an insight...
...Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America...
...What if al Qaeda remains in Iraq...
...Dennis Goldford, from Drake, says that many Democrats see Clinton as “back to the future...
...But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be diffi cult to pull off...
...They interrupted him more than a dozen times with enthusiastic applause...
...It is no longer inevitable...
...There are no questions that catch him off guard, no issues he hasn’t considered...
...Like all rights, though, they are constrained by the needs and the rights of the community...
...He attended college, fi rst at Occidental College and later at Columbia University...
...What will old people do...
...We’re putting more money into patrolling our borders...
...Clinton is too opportunistic, too corporate, too Washington...
...If Clinton is deploying the strength of her machine (inherited from her husband), Obama is putting his faith in hope...
...Although the latter request often elicited laughter, it’s clear people are taking him seriously...
...How...
...Look, if Canada paid $100 an hour, I’ll bet there would be a whole bunch of folks who were fl ooding over the border in the other direction...
...If Clinton is deploying the strength of her machine (inherited from her husband), Obama is putting his faith in hope...
...And that’s not good for her...
...Now, how we solve that problem...
...They do now, of course...
...Indeed, it is diffi cult to leave an Obama event without being assaulted by dozens of campaign volunteers shoving clipboards in your face and urging you to sign an Obama supporter card, which provides the campaign an opportunity to get you to the caucuses...
...And that should be good for Obama...
...His mother later married an Indonesian man and pursued an academic interest in anthropology, moving to Indonesia with her son...
...I’m going to talk about immigration and I’m going to talk about all that stuff...
...The fact of the matter is, since George Bush took offi ce, 3.5 million undocumented workers came into this country...
...But it looks increasingly as if the Democratic contest might come down to a battle of Hope vs...
...He said: “FDR not only enlisted Americans to create employment, he targeted that service to build our infrastructure and conserve our environment...
...It’d probably cost us billions of dollars in additional resources...
...It was quite a contrast...
...Laughter] Because those two things aren’t always the same...
...Although Hillary Clinton criticized his position as “naive,” when he fi rst articulated it in a debate, crowds here in Iowa give him sustained applause every time he mentions it...
...If his health care plan is not quite Canadian, that is much more a matter of practicality than desire...
...We’ll expand USA Freedom Corps . . .” And all of that came before Obama came to the second thing he’ll do: “invest in ideas that can help us meet our common challenges...
...workers anymore because now you’re subject to minimum wage laws, you’re subject to worker safety laws, and you’re subject to the ability to unionize...
...And no one has gained from this new reality as much as Barack Obama...
...They don’t want to pay the minimum wage, they don’t want to observe worker safety laws, they don’t want unions...
...He had said these same things three hours earlier at a rally on the campus of Grinnell College...
...You know what...
...and wise-seeming despite his youth...
...Obama plans to expand AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000, and double the size of the Peace Corps...
...Energy Corps...
...There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America...
...But there is a problem with his popularity amongst this age group...
...If Barack doesn’t win Iowa, it is just a dream”) to Karl Rove (“Iowa is your chance to best her...
...The lawyer told me that he has problems with each of them...
...According to a report on the Washington Post blog, two of the nation’s largest and most active labor organizations, the AFL-CIO and AFSCME, are running ads for her in Iowa...
...Students will be away on winter break during the caucuses...
...This process continues—interrupted by mini-speeches and lots of dealmaking—until all the caucus-goers have distributed themselves to “viable” candidates...
...Senior Corps...
...Just 30 minutes earlier, Obama was standing below a two-story American fl ag hanging from the jogging track at the University of Iowa Field House...
...The bottom line one month before the Iowa caucuses is this: Hillary Clinton’s victory was inevitable as long as it seemed inevitable...
...You’re going to pay a signifi cant fi ne...
...Before it all, he had talked to his strategists about how he would spend the four weeks that remain before the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008...
...To that end, he boasts that he plans to talk to our enemies, including Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
...Even in this hyperpartisan setting, Obama sought words that would place him above the back-and-forth sniping of left and right...
...He’s been doing this—or some version of it—for more than 10 months...
...This is the Obama trick, and it explains why, despite his very liberal voting record in the Senate (and in the Illinois Senate before that), he is not viewed as a left-wing ideologue...
...At this point there is a fi nal headcount...
...When the large SUV came to a stop in front of the hotel, Obama, wearing just slacks and a white oxford despite the sub-freezing temperature, slowly opened his door and looked at the sliding glass doors some 20 feet away...
...last Tuesday night, Barack Obama was gazing vacantly out the window of a gold Chevy Tahoe as it moved deliberately through the sleet to the Sheraton Hotel in Iowa City...
...And before that, he gave an interview to the staff of the Des Moines Register...
...Number two: The most important thing we can do to discourage illegal immigration is to crack down on employers who are hiring these folks [applause] hiring folks because they don’t want to pay American workers what it takes to get them working...
...Well now the fun part starts...
...Bill Clinton appointed him CEO of AmeriCorps, and Wofford helped Hillary Clinton craft her failed national health care plan...
...The most striking thing about Obama on the campaign trail is how little time he spends discussing national security issues...
...An “American Opportunity Tax Credit” and a “Green Job Corps...
...That’s what they’re trying to do...
...confi dent, but not cocky...
Vol. 13 • December 2007 • No. 14
