WDM, IA - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Because Iowa is full of Independents who are being courted by both political parties, we get The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly during any election year and especially during the Presidential elections.

The Good:

We get a lot of interest from the candidates, they’re swinging through Iowa on their way to any other state in the union. You want to go form Maine to Connecticut, why not take a swing through Iowa? Makes sense to me. Today the President made a campaign stop right here in the Des Moines area, at the Living History Farms just up the road from where we live. How often do you get a chance to see a real live sitting President?

I am a genuine dyed-in-the-wool, Democrat. I can’t say that I was ‘born and bred’ a Democrat since my parents were Republicans; my mother was even the precinct chairman long ago for the Nixon campaign. Luckily I married another Democrat. Our next door neighbors are actually in a split marriage: she’s a Democrat and he’s a Republican and, when they go to the caucuses here every 4 years, they split up and enter different rooms.

Thus, both Gary and I are excited about seeing the Big Guy right here in Des Moines. We’ve got our ‘OBAMA 2012’ shirts on, our camera over my shoulder and we’re heading over. The doors opened at 10:30 and he was scheduled to speak at 1:30. Luckily it was a cloudy day with a bit of a breeze since we had forgotten our hats. As we neared the site, we noticed the growing swell of cars, policemen directing traffic and the scores of people streaming in. But, we didn’t want to be caught in the traffic so we turned around and parked away from the festivities. No sense getting caught in the masses of cars leaving when it’s over.

We began walking (getting our daily walk in also - a two-fer) and joined the throngs of people heading over. While we were waiting for the cop to let us cross the 6 lanes of traffic, we were talking with a group of 6 college-aged women with red tickets. Oops, ours were green. They told us they had bleacher tickets and, sure enough, we saw the red tickets heading to the front of the crowd. Shucky darn - but we did notice that there were quite a few old duffers like us standing in the red ticketed section and lots of young people in our green section too.

As you can see from this picture, we were a bit away from the action which is way up under the trees. If you can see that itty bitty white dot in the middle beneath the trees, you’ve got an idea of our view. That is the white shirt of one of the early speakers.

Here’s a picture that we scanned from the local newspaper showing the crowd. I’ve drawn an arrow to where Gary and I are standing. See, there we are. Well, actually, Gary says that I drew the arrow across his face and you can see only me. Ha. Ha. It was a lively, happy crowd with lots of Obama hats, pins, signs, t-shirts and other paraphernalia.

Meanwhile the security was tight - they even took off the caps of the water bottles as they passed them out to the crowd. Do they think we’re going to cause a riot with bottle caps? How dangerous do they think they are? One young man was occupied with trying to crush one plastic bottle so tightly that he could stuff it into another. Whatever keeps you amused.

At 1:20 a young man in local politics who had served in Afghanistan began to speak. Then, at 1:30, on the dot, The President appeared. What timing. He spoke to a friendly audience and we all clapped and cheered throughout the speech. Then it was over, he left, the crowd began to stream out and we headed back to the car.

We understand that Paul Ryan and Joe Biden will be in Iowa this coming week and I’m sure that all 4 candidates will circle through Iowa several times before the election. That is the good part about being in Iowa.

The Bad:

Our airwaves are covered by ads: 10-second ones to 30-second ones. They are everywhere, especially during the news at night, which is the only program we watch on TV. This is early September so we still get some regular ads like Ford and Ambien but soon even those stalwarts will be crowded out by more political ads.

The Ugly:

Those ads again. Why do so many ads have to be negative? Well, the answer to that question is pretty simple - they work. No one remembers those light positive ads but the lies in the negative ones are a different story. Don Henley said we all liked the Dirty Laundry and I guess he’s right.

And those robo-calls. This is another one of those Ugly aspects. We’ve gotten to the point that, if we don’t recognize the city where the call originates, we just let it ring. If there’s a message, we’ll call back. If there’s no message - we’ve dodged the bullet.

Yep, Iowa and all the other swing states get The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

On the way home from the rally, we turned on MSNBC on our Sirius radio. Yes, yes, I know it’s a left-leaning station but at least I am very aware of that and listen to it for that reason. I labor under no illusion that I am getting ‘fair and balanced’ news. If I want that, I can listen to CNN and NPR. But, when I turned the Sirius on, they were broadcasting the pre-game show for the Iowa State University football game. WOW. I was excited. We don’t often get ISU games broadcast on TV and our radio reception for the ISU stations is pretty poor. Here it was on MSNBC on our Sirius. Great. Interestingly, Fox Sports Network is airing the game on TV while MSNBC is airing it on Sirius. Someone with a warped sense of humor must have negotiated those contracts. Ah, yes, it’s all about the money

Iowa State won handily and life is good.