Published: 01.19.2004
By Calvin Woodward
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Talk about audacity.
There they stand, anointed by no one, eight Democrats who think they have what
it takes to be president, each saying, "Choose me."
They stand where George W. Bush stood four years ago, showing the same nerve,
asking Americans to take the same leap of faith.
American voters are audacious, too. Not only do they pick their president, but
they insist on picking who gets to run for president from the two big parties,
making them rare birds in the world's menagerie of representative governments.
The chattering ritual of American democracy begins anew today as Iowans, in
private homes and public buildings, hold caucuses and cast the first votes that
count in the 2004 presidential election.
The ritual begins in small rural states, refuges from the acid cynicism that
surrounds politics in America.
The people who want to run this high-tech, Internet-wired, suburb-packed, terrorist-threatened,
bumper-to-bumper country find themselves taking positions on the Iraq war one
minute and hog waste lagoons the next, and pitching it face to face to a pig
farmer or his offended neighbor.
Yet millions of Americans grouse about the choices - say there is no choice,
really.
They don't see the distinctions on the issues. They look at candidates - one
election after another - and see solid men with no flash, or flashy men who
must have a screw loose somewhere.
They wonder whether their votes matter, whether the votes will be counted if
they even cast them, and what else is on TV. Some of the Constitution's framers
were cynics, too. But together, they gave the generations after them their marching
orders. Today Iowans are prepared to march.
First, they listened - to the candidates, to the neighbors lobbying them, to
the out-of-state people who came to their homes. The Iowa campaign takes politics
down to the most intimate level.
Thomas W. Kepler, 58, opened the door of his Newton home to a blast of cold
air and greetings from Dino Esemplare and John Palumbo, union activists from
New York campaigning for Richard Gephardt. Kepler invited them into his basement
family room, where they talked for 30 minutes, even after he made it clear he
was supporting John Kerry, a fellow Vietnam veteran.
"Brother, I wish you weren't voting against Brother Gephardt, but you fought
. . . for the right to do what you wish," Esemplare said, setting down
his coffee and rising to leave. "God bless you, sir, for voting. God bless
you for fighting for my right to vote."
In New Hampshire, up next, one candidate's courtship of one voter played out
over a full day that spilled into a foggy night. Roberto Fuentes, 19, must not
have heard all the ways American democracy has been trashed over the centuries.
He showed up at a Kerry event inclined to vote for Howard Dean, and Kerry's
people invited him on their bus.
"We're going to take a minute," Kerry said, strolling back to talk
to the young man. That minute turned into a 40-minute discussion of foreign
policy, education and health care, ending at 10:45 p.m., with Fuentes - who
was no easy sell - finally on Kerry's side.
Myriad encounters like that involving one candidate after another are the standard
this early in the ritual. Fifty people from Philadelphia piled into a bus Friday
to drive to Iowa and fan out for Dean. John Edwards kissed a baby, pleasing
the parent but leaving the child looking terrified. Such moments are soon to
be overwhelmed by mass means of communication as the politicians spread across
the country and mount even heavier assaults on the airwaves.
For now, it's up to the Iowans to honor the spirit of the Founding Fathers,
who set in motion a form of self-government that others in the world have emulated,
shaped to their own circumstances and died to achieve.
Not that the framers thought everything would turn out swell.
"Remember, democracy never lasts long," wrote President John Adams,
one of them. "It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never
was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
To be sure, the Constitution shunted women aside and treated slaves as three-fifths
of a white person. It took a Civil War to purge the document of that mistake
and determine, as Abraham Lincoln said, whether this nation, "or any nation
so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
And this "more perfect union" still stumbles. For one thing, elections
are held in which the candidate with fewer votes becomes the winner.
Mario Cuomo, former New York governor, has a forthcoming book looking on how
Lincoln might address the issues of today. As Cuomo sees it, the Constitution
did not set that high a standard, but Lincoln raised the bar, and presidents
of both parties have continued to do so in one way or another.
"We are still what Lincoln called an unfinished work," he said in
an interview. And each election is about moving closer to "that more noble
view of ourselves."
Rising new democracies tend not to buy the U.S. model as a piece. They take
basic principles - a government that guarantees basic liberties, is accountable
and offers citizens opportunity to shape policy - and tailor them.
"Those are the elements of our democracy that are getting replicated,"
Cuomo said. No one knows how the details might play out in the complexities
of, say, Afghan tribal politics.
Right now, figuring out the complexities of the Iowa caucus system is challenge
enough.