Published: October 08, 2007 11:43 am      

RAASCH: Iowa, N.H. may be celebrating their last 'firsts'

AMES, Iowa — Spotted on the bucolic campus of Iowa State University: a bumper sticker that says, “I’m for caribou, and I vote.”

This appeared to be less about a wild animal half a continent away than the whimsy that Iowans employ toward the ubiquitous presidential politics in their state.

But will this be the last real first for Iowa? If so, what will be lost?

To many Americans, Iowa is caucuses and corn. That narrow view of heartland reality is every bit as distorted as thinking that California is San Francisco and L.A.

Still, Iowans have embraced the caucus label and all that comes with it. They might grouse or groan at the endless spring of candidates and campaign ads, they might mildly complain when candidates have the audacity to leapfrog their town for one 45 minutes away, but mostly they celebrate the opening act of presidential theater unfolding before them.

But now an already long presidential campaign threatens to move the traditionally first New Hampshire and Iowa contests to December or right after New Year’s Day.

And it is this prolonged campaign, not the quadrennial “what gives them the right?” arguments, that might finally provoke wholesale changes in presidential nominations and take away or diminish the pole positions Iowans and New Hampshirites have staked out since the 1970s.

Some Iowans are resigned to change of some sort.

“I think there are a large number of people who think this may be the last cycle,” said Dianne Bystrom, director of Iowa State University’s Catt Center for Women and Politics. “There is some feeling that this may be the last year where we may be able to hold the line on every other state moving up.”

Over half of the states have moved their nominating processes from spring into the dead of winter in 2008 with Florida Democrats in a legal showdown with their national party on their mid-January primary plans.

The calendar creep threatens to push Iowa and New Hampshire to consider wrapping around Christmas, leading into a Feb. 5 “Tsunami Tuesday” of 20 or so states who plan primaries that day. The longest general election presidential campaign will ensue. Babies conceived on Tsunami Tuesday will be born on Election Day. A general presidential campaign as long as human gestation.

Steffen Schmidt, an Iowa State political scientist who has literally written the book on American government and politics, thinks there is still a compelling “opening act” argument to make to keep small states first. He said one likely scenario beginning in four years would keep Iowa and New Hampshire in their pole positions, followed by about four big regional primaries around the country.

Why Iowa and New Hampshire? Why not? American life has well-established, even celebrated, centers and starting points. New York is the center of finance. Los Angeles produces entertainment. Nashville is the cradle of country music. Once upon a time, Detroit was Motown and the capital of cars. Washington, D.C., produces ... well, Washington is the home of the federal government.

Iowa and New Hampshire don’t end the race as much as they warm up the track. Bigger states that follow still have their say, and this will certainly be the case with so many piling into one day in 2008. And while they are often twinned in political equations, Iowa and New Hampshire often conflict or reject the eventual nominees altogether. Bill Clinton won neither state in 1992. George W. Bush won Iowa in 2000 but got ambushed by John McCain eight days later.

In 2004, if Howard Dean were truly the new grass-roots candidate, he could have soothed his thumping in Iowa in his native New England. Of course, Dean, not Iowa or New Hampshire, caused Dean’s demise.

Monday night, Schmidt will give a university lecture on the Iowa caucuses. He’s labeled it, “More Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,” and he plans to talk about the “weird media tweakings and gotchas” of an “unscientific process” that leaves an “anything can happen” uncertainty until Iowans stand up on caucus night. But he ultimately defends it as a bastion of personal politics before the mega-campaigns kick in and the show goes from tarmac to tarmac, from TV ad to TV ad.

“Politics is partly about establishing certain traditions, certain rituals,” Schmidt said, arguing that every story must have its “dark and stormy night” beginning.

“We don’t nominate the president of the United States,” Schmidt said. “We just provide the opening scene. I think that is a useful thing.”

Contact Chuck Raasch at craasch@gns.gannett.com