New York Times Blogs, NY
12-26-07
The Early Word: Eight Full Days
By Ariel Alexovich
Eight days! The candidates have eight full days to push forward in Iowa.
Democrats and Republicans alike are back on the campaign trail after a brief
two-day holiday break. The Wall Street Journal handicaps their short-term
strategies:
The Democratic front-runners seem to be favoring Iowa, with Sens. Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama heading there, and John Edwards taking advantage
of their absence to campaign in the Granite State.
Among Republicans, Mitt Romney hopes to head off a John McCain surge in
New Hampshire with appearances there, while Mr. McCain heads to Iowa. Rudy
Giuliani and Mike Huckabee will also be doing a little campaigning in Iowa before
replenishing their campaign coffers for the final sprint with fund-raising
appearances in Florida.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, tied in the Iowa polls, together will make a total
of 16 campaign stops in the Hawkeye State over the next two days. Mr. Obama,
hoping to close the sale, will campaign exclusively there through the Jan. 3
caucus date, according to a preliminary schedule.
Expect a sharp rise in personal attacks, warns the Los Angeles Times.
While the approach of Christmas kept the candidates on relatively good
behavior, especially in their warm-and-fuzzy TV spots, few expected their
reluctance to attack to last.
“It’s probably going to be harder for them to restrain themselves,” said Peverill
Squire, professor of political science at the University of Iowa. “They’ll be trying to
draw more comparisons and contrasts among themselves.”
Among Republicans, the Wall Street Journal expects the Iowa contest to come
down to a Romney versus Huckabee fight.
In Iowa, the Republican presidential race has come down to two former
governors who offer caucus goers a stark choice. It’s the pulpit vs. the
boardroom, poverty vs. privilege, passion vs. preparedness.
Mike Huckabee loves homespun tales and self-deprecating jokes. Mitt
Romney basks in PowerPoint slides and statistics. Mr. Huckabee, a firefighter’s
son, is a Southerner born and bred. Mr. Romney, son of a CEO-turned-governor,
roamed from Michigan to Massachusetts to Utah.
They embody two wings of the Republican Party — social conservatives and
economic conservatives — that sometimes sit uneasily.
While John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are competitive in
national polls, all three are focusing on states after Iowa. The kickoff Jan. 3
caucus here is largely between Messrs. Romney and Huckabee.
The Times’s Mark Leibovich, in a reporter’s notebook piece, says that there’s an
anxious atmosphere in New Hampshire these days as voters are annoyed at how
the primary calendar gives them less national attention than before.
New Hampshire voters seem somewhat insecure these days about being
overshadowed by Iowa. For the past two decades, the states have coexisted as
a kind of “1” and “1A” in early-voting supremacy. But Iowa is clearly the “It” state
of late 2007, maybe a consequence of Senator John Kerry’s winning strategy in
2004 in which he focused almost exclusively on Iowa in December and January,
scored an upset victory in the state and rolled from there to the Democratic
nomination.
In recent weeks, most of the major candidates in both parties have spent most
of their time in the Hawkeye State (notable exceptions being Mr. Giuliani and
Senator John McCain of Arizona). Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of
Connecticut, even moved his family there.
While attention will shift to New Hampshire after Iowa’s caucuses on Jan. 3,
the condensed voting calendar has rendered the Granite State’s moment in the
spotlight shorter, to just five days, because its primary is Jan. 8. Mike Huckabee
is even encouraging some New Hampshire voters to vote later. “If you’re
supporting someone else, the primary for you has been moved to February,” Mr.
Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said in the northern outpost of Berlin.
The Boston Globe, however, writes that New Hampshire voters will be
particularly important when it comes to which candidate’s health care proposal
they favor. The Granite State has the most glaring difference between what its
Republicans and Democrats want.
The stark difference between the parties is reflected in the findings of a Boston
Globe poll of likely voters in the Jan. 8 New Hampshire presidential primary - 80
percent of Democrats polled say providing health coverage is government’s
responsibility; only 30 percent of Republicans agree. Moreover, it explains the
dramatically divergent healthcare proposals of the candidates - Democrats would
move toward universal coverage and a larger government role; Republicans
generally favor tax incentives to expand private insurance and restrain costs
through market forces.
Mr. Edwards will be in New Hampshire today, and he’ll probably be tardy to
whatever auditorium he’s due to address. The Times’s Julie Bosman writes that
on the trail, Democrat John Edwards nearly always runs late, keeping crowds
waiting for over a half-hour.
Like Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson before him, Mr. Edwards nearly always
runs late while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. He
routinely begins events more than 45 minutes or even an hour past the
scheduled starting time, keeping dozens or, lately, hundreds of people in jampacked rooms awaiting his entrance.
With the approach of the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and the New Hampshire
primary five days later, Mr. Edwards, touring the two states at breakneck speed,
has been drawing crowds that are bigger, louder and more prone to the
occasional standing ovation than ever before.
And while most people who come out to see him are willing to endure some
delays, his habit of lateness has alienated others, some of whom say it is just
plain rude.
Mrs. Clinton is hoping her national campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, has the
winning strategy for Iowa in her back pocket, writes the Wall Street Journal.
Looking close to invincible two months ago, Sen. Clinton finds herself in a
tightening race for the Democratic presidential nomination. With eight days to go
before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Ms. Solis Doyle, a 42-year-old daughter of
Mexican immigrants who never ran a presidential effort before, is trying to reenergize Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
For both, it’s the fight of their careers. In the caucuses, Mrs. Clinton faces a
strengthening Barack Obama and a consistently competitive John Edwards. The
three are in a statistical dead heat. Although Mrs. Clinton retains a strong lead in
national polls and her change in message is playing well, if she loses Iowa, she
could be hobbled going into New Hampshire and other primaries. By this month,
her problems here had stirred speculation about a campaign shake-up, including
a demotion of Ms. Solis Doyle.
Yet even as this idea circulated, Ms. Solis Doyle was gaining influence inside
the campaign. She is moving beyond executing strategy to helping make it. She
has overseen new commercials featuring personal stories of “the Hillary I Know”
and an all-county blitz through Iowa in a “Hill-a-Copter.” She talks and emails
with her boss several times a day, with prompts like “Smile more.” She is making
budget decisions, including a recent call to double the length of commercials in
Iowa to 60 seconds.
Patrick Healy of The Times scrutinizes Mrs. Clinton’s White House years in a
long feature that explores her failed health care plan and official visits to 79
countries.
An interview with Mrs. Clinton, conversations with 35 Clinton administration
officials and a review of books about her White House years suggest that she
was more of a sounding board than a policy maker, who learned through
osmosis rather than decision-making, and who grew gradually more comfortable
with the use of military power.
Her time in the White House was a period of transition in foreign policy and
national security, with the cold war over and the threat of Islamic terrorism still
emerging. As a result, while in the White House, she was never fully a part of
either the old school that had been focused on the Soviet Union and the
possibility of nuclear war or the more recent strain of national security thinking
defined by issues like nonstate threats and the proliferation of nuclear
technology.
Grundy Center, Iowa, has a population of only some 2,500 folks, but it’s been
host to 13 candidate events over the past year. The Des Moines Register takes a
look at the emphasis on small town appearances in this election cycle.
A candidate standing on a hay bale somewhere in the rural Iowa outposts is
firmly a part of caucus campaign lore, but Jim McCormick contends that there is
more small-town emphasis this year.
“There has been a chorus on how important retail politics are in Iowa. A lot of
them have taken up the mantra that they are going to all 99 counties,” said
McCormick, chairman of the political science department at Iowa State
University.
John Edwards recently bragged that he has visited all 99 counties - twice.
Candidates who are relying on a hefty youth movement to give them an edge in
the polls may be disappointed, writes the Washington Post. College students
might not caucus in Iowa.
“Some people are talking this election to death, but there’s plenty of young
people who aren’t going to caucus,” said Turner, a music major from Clinton, in
the eastern part of the state. “It’s not a priority right now. It should be. But, really,
it’s not.”
Many of the presidential candidates have actively courted young voters,
sending them text messages, visiting college campuses and launching Web sites
that explain the complicated caucus process. The goal is not only to win over
these voters but, just as critically, to get the ripe but unreliable group to turn up at
caucus sites, perhaps hundreds of miles from their homes.
Democrat Bill Richardson is expected to keep pushing his economic and
education reform ideas on the trail, reports the New Hampshire Union Leader.
With the state’s primary drawing near, presidential hopeful Bill Richardson
covered more than 400 miles in two days recently, touting his plan for jobs and
education, two issues he says are unsatisfactorily addressed by the other
candidates.
At stops from Hanover to Berlin, the second-term Democratic governor of New
Mexico limits his speech to about 15 minutes, leaving the rest of the time open
for questions. He doesn’t look happy when his staffers motion for him to finish up
the voter Q&A.
“C’mon, I’m at 12 percent here,” he jokes, referencing his state poll numbers,
which put him in fourth place behind Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John
Edwards.
The nod from rocker Jon Bon Jovi is one of the most highly sought endorsements
for politicians in his home state of New Jersey, and now that appeal is spreading
to national candidates, like Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
“He basically says, ‘Hey, here’s where I’m from, like it or not,’ ” said Ms.
Whitman, a Republican who later became administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency under President Bush. “And that’s refreshing for the state of
New Jersey because we don’t have a lot of that.”
Former New Jersey governors, senators and state legislators who have
worked or played with him over the years say it is a combination of his fealty to
New Jersey and his blue-collar authenticity that draws politicians to him. And as
someone who sings about his “plastic dashboard Jesus” and performs at
concerts to fight global warming, his appeal is broad.
Campaign trail roundup:
* Hillary Clinton campaigns with Bill Clinton, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack
and his wife, Christie, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Later, she holds campaign events
in Pella and Cumming.
* Barack Obama kicks off a bus tour through Iowa with a town hall meeting in
Mason City, Iowa. Later, he meets with Iowans in Webster City, and holds rallies
in Fort Dodge and Carroll.
* Rudy Giuliani participates in a roundtable discussion with veterans at American
Legion Post 119 in Largo, Fla.
* Mike Huckabee goes pheasant hunting at High Prairie Farm in Osceola, Iowa.
* John McCain holds a town hall meeting at the School for the Deaf in Council
Bluffs, Iowa.
* John Edwards holds town hall meetings in Conway and Laconia, New
Hampshire. He continues to stump there with stops in Manchester and Salem.
* Bill Richardson holds “Presidential Job Interview” events in Council Bluffs,
Onawa and Sioux City, Iowa. He also meets with Iowans at the Dunlap Livestock
Auction in Dunlap.
* Mitt Romney campaigns in New Hampshire, meeting with local voters in
Henniker and Hooksett. Later, he holds a town hall meeting in Merrimack.
* Fred Thompson meets with locals in Creston, Iowa.