At Iowa's State Fair, A Political Circus
Forget Budgets. Ever Balance a Corn Dog?
By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page D01
DES MOINES -- Is it possible to look presidential while holding a corn dog to your lips?
The question presents a dicey riddle for candidates passing through the Iowa State Fair. It looms palpably over John Kerry as he rushes past the deep-fried Oreo and Snickers stand, the beer tent, the butter cow, the zucchini shaped like a duck, mutant beets, Tadpole the Clown, nut rolls and the photo of the American Honey Princess for 2003.
Kerry is on his best Regular Guy behavior, just another slob with pleated Ralph Lauren khakis and a large entourage. He is shaking hands, buying a $4 strawberry smoothie with a $20 bill and leaving a dollar tip. He thinks the John Deere tractor display is sublime. And it's just so great to meet people. "Hey buddy, what you gonna do with those dice," he says to a kid holding two furry dice.
He would love to stay longer and visit the livestock. But his people are running him off to a labor event in Waterloo.
"Wait," Kerry says, pivoting. "Gotta get a corn dog."
Is it a gastronomic pander or some larger statement of who he is? Or maybe, sometimes, is a corn dog just a corn dog?
Kerry's is slathered with yellow mustard. He hoists it to his mouth, pauses and asks a college student what he is studying at school. But he doesn't appear to be listening to Devon Silk of Drake University. Kerry, in fact, looks like he's posing with his corn dog at the ready. And sure enough, Kerry With Corn Dog plays big in the next day's Des Moines Register.
This is a small triumph for the big-maned patrician whose Regular Guy bona fides -- suspect to begin with -- took a battering a few days earlier when he walked into a cheese steak shop in South Philly and asked for Swiss cheese on his sandwich. But today brings the chance of public renewal, or at least fine-tuning.
Good Morning, Iowa, the message goes: John Forbes Kerry likes your corn dogs.
The idea is to hit the sweet spot between Everyman and Eminence. To be at once leaderly and neighborly, to fit in and also to stand slightly above. That's the dance of retail politicking, for which August is a holy season and the Iowa State Fair is a mecca.
Congress is out, donors are on vacation and candidates have nothing to do here but eat battered food and meet Iowa caucus voters -- or at least people who will pass for them on TV. The fair, which will bring in an estimated 1 million people before it ends tonight, drew seven presidential candidates within a 48-hour period last week. That includes every hopeful except Al Sharpton and Bob Graham, who was here a few days earlier. Together, the candidates form a postcard collage of political Americana on 400 acres.
See Average Joe Lieberman biting into a kosher deep-fried Twinkie.
See Dick Gephardt posing for a photo op in a "Pork, the Other White Meat!" apron.
See Dennis Kucinich warbling "The Star-Spangled Banner."
And here every candidate, naturally, talks about how fun this all is. But these are not the free-form walks they appear to be. There is careful image calibration going on. There is also danger.
"There are so many unscripted moments," says Carol Moseley Braun, the former senator from Illinois who is wandering the fairground at lunchtime Thursday. "You never know when you're going to mispronounce someone's name, get kicked in the shins or dribble corn dog all over your chin."
She is standing with her one-aide entourage in the corner of an exhibit hall reading a flier about a new carpet-dyeing service. She is learning things -- "I had no idea you could get carpets dyed" -- and people are leaving her alone. She blends in seamlessly, draws no fuss, unlike Howard Dean.
"I want pork on a stick," the former Vermont governor is saying nearby about an hour later. He strides with conviction past a corn dog stand. He's not eating corn dogs, and not because he just polished off a one-pound hamburger.
"I can get all the corn dogs I want at home," Dean says. And before anyone can ask who in the world eats corn dogs at home (and whether such a person is fit for higher office), Dean finds himself at the Fried Twinkie Stand. Dean, a physician, is not eating any fried Twinkie, either. But he agrees to take a bite of a fried Twinkie if his personal aide, Kate O'Connor, eats one. "I'll even pay," Dean says, handing O'Connor three dollars from his wallet, "and you know how cheap I am."
O'Connor returns with six deep-fried Oreos, saying something about how the wait was too long for the fried Twinkies. She gives a plump, golden-brown snack to Dean. He eats half of one and bank-shots the rest into a trash bin. Then he dispatches with a question from a Dutch television reporter and heads to the barbecue pit. He dawns the photo-op apron, pats a pile of pork loins with a spatula.
After five minutes, Dean looks hot and annoyed. He needs this like he needs Dutch television. Finally he escapes, works some picnic tables, signs an autograph for a fifth-grade girl and begins a conversation with a photographer.
The photographer, Larry Fink, is working on a documentary about poverty in America. Dean is familiar with the project, asks a few questions and tells Fink how fascinating it all sounds. But before the discussion can get too heavy into poverty, his Iowa press secretary, Sarah Leonard, taps Dean on the shoulder.
"Excuse me, Governor," she says, "It's time for your pork on a stick."
"Hey, who are you?" the big man says to John Edwards on Friday morning. "You running for president or something?"
Edwards walks over to the man, who is under the KGGO ("Iowa's Classic Rock") tent. They're coming to you live from the Iowa State Fairgrounds. The big man goes by the name the Round Guy, part of the KGGO morning team. "My anorexia's in remission," the Round Guy tells Edwards, who comes over to introduce himself, tempting the fates with an unscripted moment.
"Hi, I'm John Edwards."
"John Edwards!" the Round Guy says. "I have a room named after you in my house."
"What?" the senator says. "An Edwards?" (No, that would be a john.)
The phrase "Is this any way to elect a president?" comes to mind.
Round Guy remarks on Edwards's sweat-drenched shirt and the senator heads off to make an obligatory pass by the butter cow in the agriculture hall. He pays no apparent homage to the iconic "Butter Cow Lady," Duffy Lyon of Toledo, Iowa, who carves the life-size bovine out of 550 pounds of low-moisture sweet butter. (She also carved the life-size Harley Davidson bike next to it). Lyon says she is leaning anyway toward Dean, who courted her endorsement for about 20 minutes Thursday.
"You can't make a spectacle of yourself," says Jennifer Palmieri, press secretary for Edwards. Edwards is trying to avoid the cliched poses of the fair. His wife, Elizabeth, who is with him, is on a kick against "unnatural photo opportunities." The Edwardses are zigzagging through the fairgrounds with their two kids, who as a general rule don't take well to scripts and advance people.
Edwards struggles to finish a sentence with any voter or reporter or staffer. He keeps apologizing. "Hey, Emma Claire!" he yells up to his 5-year-old, who is passing by overhead on a gondola. He'll spend the next several minutes with his wife trying to coax Emma Claire and 3-year-old Jack off the Tsunami slide.
"One more, Emma Claire! I mean it."
"Could this be any less contrived?" Palmieri asks a reporter who is watching. Voters react to authenticity, not theater. "They just want to see if a candidate can be comfortable in this setting," Palmieri says. How do you measure if someone is comfortable?
"You don't want to look too goofy."
Meantime, Joe Lieberman is standing nearby, getting ready to stuff a deep-fried Twinkie in his face.
Lieberman is just a few yards away from where the Edwards cluster passes en route to the petting zoo. ("C'mon Emma Claire, we're going to the the petting zoo.") The Connecticut Democrat says he's acting on a dare. He is addressing a crowd of about 100 people while standing on a bale of hay. "I have been issued a challenge to eat a deep-fried Twinkie," Lieberman says in his deep, crumbly voice. "I do not resent this challenge. And I will not shirk from this challenge."
He then goes on to say how vulnerable the nation is to another catastrophic terrorist attack.
"Okay, time for deep-fried Twinkies," Lieberman says, wrapping up his 20-minute speech.
"Okay, Kevin," he says to Kevin McCarthy, his Iowa state director, "this is the moment." Earlier in the day, McCarthy planned for Lieberman's spontaneous excursion by visiting the deep-fried Twinkie stand to ensure they were made with kosher ingredients. (Lieberman is an observant Jew.)
Lieberman approaches the stand and pays three dollars for a Twinkie. It looks like a Twinkie wrapped in a big pancake and deep-fried. He squirts a sugary glaze on top from a plastic bottle, then turns around to share the experience with about 20 of his closest media friends. He opens wide and bites.
"Not bad," he declares, adding that if he makes any gaffes the rest of the day, he's prepared to invoke "the deep-fried Twinkie defense."
The media throng grows. "Would you be doing this if there weren't all these cameras around?" one camerawoman asks Lieberman.
"Yes," he says, adding that his "vision for the future of America includes deep-fried Twinkies."
Never mind that the Lieberman deep-fried Twinkie spectacle makes it impossible for anyone else to actually get near the deep-fried Twinkie stand. A few people look irritated, American hunger impeded by political theater. "Don't you think this looks a little bit silly?" the same camerawoman asks.
"No," Lieberman says, seeming slightly annoyed. "It's all part of the fun."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company |
