Giving Iowa a try: Gephardt vs. Dean, amid the corn

National Review, Jan 26, 2004 by Byron York

Clarion, Iowa

It's the loneliest time to be campaigning for president in Iowa, but Richard Gephardt is up and at it. Two days after Christmas, with the press corps nowhere to be found and many people still in a holiday blur, Gephardt rolls across the north central part of the state, going from small town to small town, meeting voters. When he arrives in Clarion (pop. 2,968), he finds about 75 people waiting at the old train station, which now houses the Chamber of Commerce. Standing in front of a fireplace with a model train stretched across the mantle, Gephardt launches into a lecture on corporate greed.

"It's about money," he tells the group. "These companies want to do things, and then they want to escape responsibility for what they do, and it's wrong." The corporations send jobs overseas, Gephardt explains, they deceive stockholders, they take away workers' rights: "Enron and WorldCom and Tyco, once you release them from responsibility, that's it. Katie bar the door." The farmers and blue-collar union workers--Gephardt's core constituency in Iowa--listen closely and nod in agreement.

A couple of hours later, after a stop in Garner (pop. 2,922), an aide drives Gephardt to the Mason City Municipal Airport, best known as the field from which Buddy Holly took off on his last plane ride after performing in nearby Clear Lake on February 2, 1959. Waiting for Gephardt near the small general-aviation office is a gleaming white Falcon 900EX, a big, luxurious, three-engine jet that happens to be owned by the BellSouth Corporation (and piloted by BellSouth pilots). Gephardt, a longtime recipient of donations from the telecommunications industry, wearily climbs aboard and takes off for a round of politicking in Oklahoma.

Arrangements like the BellSouth flight are a great boon to the financially strapped Gephardt campaign. Federal Election Commission rules require the candidate to reimburse BellSouth only for the price of comparable tickets on a commercial flight--a small part of the real cost of flying the Falcon. But Gephardt aides say there is no contradiction between their man's anti-corporate rhetoric and his acceptance of BellSouth's generosity. "He's running for president," says one aide, "and in order to do that, you have to take airplane rides." Still, at the very least, the image of Gephardt riding the company jet doesn't seem entirely consistent with the message he is sending to the working people of rural Iowa.

But Gephardt needs all the help he can get. In Iowa, he is locked in mortal combat with the Democratic front-runner, former Vermont governor Howard Dean; polls show Gephardt, who won the Iowa caucuses in his first run for president in 1988, in second place and within striking distance. But he has far less money to work with--in the last three months of 2003, Gephardt raised about $3 million to Dean's $15 million--which means he can't hire as many staffers, can't put up as many signs, can't do anything quite as much as Dean.

But there's a much more profound contrast between the two campaigns. What is playing out in Iowa as the January 19 caucuses approach is a major battle inside the Democratic party--not between its liberal wing and its moderate wing, or its virulently anti-war wing and its mildly anti-war wing, but between young and old. Gephardt's supporters are old, and Dean's are young; Gephardt's campaign events are tired, while Dean's are filled with energy; Gephardt plays to his aging audiences' fears, while Dean plays to his younger audiences' anger and sense of social obligation. More than just another Iowa caucus, the race is Gephardt's last stand--and perhaps the last stand of his most devoted supporters as well.

FEELING THEIR PAIN

When Gephardt travels to rural Iowa, the people who come to see him don't have much money, by and large. Many are retired, and they worry about the social safety net. Gephardt tells them he knows what it's like, because he's one of them. "I grew up poor," he tells the crowd in Creston (pop. 7,597) in south central Iowa. "My dad was a Teamster and a milk-truck driver. He lost that job after ten years. Neither of my parents got through high school. We didn't have anything."

Gephardt tells them he got where he is today because of lots of government help--loans and scholarships and other assistance. "I didn't do any of it on my own," he says. Now, he promises them what he says will be the greatest benefit of all, universal health care.

"When I become president, in my first week, I will ask Congress to lay aside the Bush tax cuts," Gephardt tells people at the stop in Garner, "and I will use those monies to see to it that every person in this country has good health insurance that can't be taken away." Gephardt claims his plan will put $3,000 back into the average family's pocket each year, while the president's tax cuts have given them just $500. "Do the math," he says.

It's a message that works for Gephardt's target audience. "He's trying so hard to help people like us, who have no money," says Wanda Heimke, a retired small-business owner in Creston, as she sits in a booth at the coffee shop where Gephardt has just finished speaking. "He thinks for the common people," adds Tommie Stoner, a farmer who is active in the local Democratic party. "He's for the middle class."