I lived out of an apartment in Des Moines' Wakonda Village and a hotel room at the Extended Stay Inn on the Waterloo/Cedar Falls border. I worked a twelve county region, one that included larger counties like Black Hawk (Waterloo) and Cerro Gordo (Mason City/Clear Lake), but also had a laundry list of smaller counties- Poweshiek (Grinnell), Tama, Grundy, Butler, Bremer, Chickasaw, Howard, Worth, Mitchell, and Floyd. I visited Native Americans, drove on dirt roads, had meetings in college town coffee shops, and had soup dinners with Congressmen. I staffed famous people (Paul Simon), Senators (Wyche Fowler), and many Congress members while I was there. I toured the Willis' Family's Dream Farm in Thornton, IA, and tasted the amazing food they produced there. I did the nightlife fun of Iowa City and Ames, and of course had some good nights in Des Moines (including my 24th birthday). I even watched the Red Sox win game seven of the ALCS in 2007 at a bar in Cedar Falls with Senator Dodd and some friends. Those long rides under the Iowa night, coming back from campaign stops in other counties to my home base in Waterloo were a time of great growth and development for me. I went from being a recent college graduate to a professional out there, and all it took me was a year out of my comfort zone, having one of the great experiences of my life.
Iowa was really great to me, but it's also been very good to all of you. It is the last bastion in our politics where retail politics and face-to-face interactions can save us from being ruled by campaign ads and Washington, DC media firms. It's a common-sense kind of place where people ask questions and then make up their mind based on the results. Oh sure, we laugh at candidates eating fried food on a stick at the Iowa State Fair, but for a brief time, we force these hyper-ambitious candidates to interact with real, average, normal people, and see how they live. What happens in Iowa during the caucus is beautiful.
The thing is, you couldn't do this in Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, or New York. I obviously love it out here, where I'm from, but it's different. You couldn't get 30 people in a coffee shop to see a second-tier Presidential candidate in July, or one-hundred people in a bar around the holidays to listen to a U.S. Senator speak about agriculture policy. Iowans take the process seriously, and they generally give candidates a look that other people around the country just wouldn't. Candidates have to do more than just run TV ads to win Iowa.
Eight years ago, I spent caucus night in a gym in Grinnell, IA. It was the site where most of the college kids went, and it was an exciting place to be. I got to Des Moines in time to see most of the speeches that night, and spent the night out in town with both the celebratory (Obama folks) and the upset (everybody else). A few short days later, I left, and the rest since is history.
I wish I was in Waverly, Clear Lake, Grinnell, Mason City, Waterloo, Grundy Center, Tama, or anywhere else in Iowa right now. Circumstances change, life changes, and sometimes you can't go back and re-experience the past. I view my time in Iowa as one of the best times I've ever had. I view the people of Iowa with a great deal of respect and fondness. I'm really glad I got a chance to experience their process. For this caucus, I'll be home in Easton, watching the results on College Hill. My heart and mind will be a thousand miles from home though.
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