Letter to Iowa: Are you kidding me?
Dear Iowa,
What is going on back there?
Seriously: Terry Branstad? Seriously? I guess you must be serious, since he’s now the official GOP nominee for governor. Dear lord.
I couldn’t believe it when I first heard he was in the running, a couple of months ago. Again: Terry Branstad? What the hell? Is the Iowa Republican Party depth chart that thin, I asked? Is Branstad that bored?
The answer to both of these questions is, apparently, “yes,” not that there was ever much question about the first. Admittedly the Iowa Democratic Party has hardly been an all-star team; yet while they’ve offered up the likes of Tom Vilsack and Chet Culver, the Republicans have managed to offer up guys who lose to the likes of Tom Vilsack and Chet Culver. That’s truly special.
Maybe they figured that, given Iowans’ preference for incumbent governors, their best chance at wresting back control of Terrace Hill would be nominating a previous governor of their own? Funny that the year this happens is probably the one year that incumbency is unlikely to count for much, but ah well. Better to take no chances, right? If the Democrats run a name from the past (Culver), the GOP will go them one better and run an actual candidate from the past! HA!
On the bright side, there are one or two relatively positive things to consider:
- As depressing as the mediocrity of Iowa politics can be, it may beat the alternative. These days, at any rate, when American politics produces a spectacular figure, he or she is a spectacular disgrace more often than not. Chet and Terry, combined, may be about as inspiring as a block of styrofoam, but at least they’re unlikely to go hiking the Appalachian Trail by way of Argentina, or end up doing time in prison. (Come to think of it, Iowa is probably one of the best places within easy reach for me to go away for a while and take a break from the nihilistic message of national and world events for a few days. Next week’s travels are probably just what I need, short of an overdose of heroin. I mean, is it just me, or has the past week been even more demoralizing than usual?)
- Apparently, Branstad is not a tea-party-approved candidate, so at least in the Iowa race for governor we are spared further empty, nonsensical speculation about the “impact” of America’s number-one incoherent, largely meaningless but allegedly highly relevant angry mob.
- For what it’s worth, Iowa is by not the only state with a refurbished gubernatorial candidate on this year’s ballot.
Makes me wonder whom else we might thaw out. Anyone seen Tom Tauke lately? Can we nominate him for something? Maybe ISU should give Jim Criner another shot as football coach?
(While on the subject of ISU athletics, how about that Big XII conference? Seems about as stable as post-Tito Yugoslavia, lately. I get the impression that 90% of this sudden peering around by most of the conference members is driven largely by fear that the other schools are peering around and might jump ship first. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And Nebraska and Texas.”)
Returning to my main theme, I admit that when it comes to ISU men’s basketball, at least, we could do a lot worse than following the retread approach. For that matter, the Cyclones already are reaching back to past glories, with Fred Hoiberg, though I would probably have more confidence in Tim Floyd, Larry Eustachy or maybe even octogenarian Johnny Orr.
Why not? Into the Delorean, everyone, and crank up Huey Lewis and the News, because you’re heading for a Time Warp Weekend… that may last for years.
It’s funny; our society’s relentless drive toward a faster shinier whizzier future pushes me to despair, yet the intellectual bankruptcy represented by dredging up the past tends to result in the same feeling. The above perfunctory attempt at looking for silver linings aside, am I just a pure malcontent, then? Is there simply nothing that would make me happy?
Maybe 1998 or thereabouts. That seems like it was a pretty good point to settle down for a while, in retrospect.
Truth to tell, though, I suppose that Local H said it best in, if I recall correctly, “Halcyon Days.”
“I’m scared of the future, but I’m bored with the past.”
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Dammit! I had the Delorean joke all teed up for the comments thread before I clicked through to the full post and saw that you beat me there. Now I have nothing clever to add and it’s all your fault, Matt.
Culver vs. Branstad promises to be a real clash of the titans… pretty unimpressive on both fronts. I’m not too alarmed about Terry as a candidate — I gather there are some hurt feelings on the GOP side after this primary, and he will be a tough sell to the teabag set. I suppose the reasoning is that the name Branstad will make older Iowans (which is to say, the dominant and fastest growing demographic) harken back to better times, but I think that’s a gamble. Will they recall the go-go ’90s, or the farm crisis ’80s? My guess is the latter is a lot closer to where Iowa’s collective head is at the moment. And if the nostalgic emphasis is on late-Branstad, then we’re talking about the tax-raising period of his career, which is obviously anathema.
Terry doesn’t seem to have a lot of wiggle room to craft a political narrative that will resonate with enough of the voting blocs he’ll need. The teabaggers are by no means in the bag, so to speak, which could be critical — judging from the obsession with ideological purity that seems to characterize the movement nationally this year, he may have already lost them. So is he going to try and run to the middle…? Branstad’s main advantage seems to be that Chester is such a schmuck, which might not be that big of a problem for Chester if he hadn’t also, by the same kind of random dumbass luck that got him into office in the first place, presided over the worst economy since… well, since Terry Branstad.
It’s hard to see anybody getting terribly excited one way or another about either of these dudes personally, so the republican strategy is going to be to flog the everloving shit out of gay marriage and hope that’s enough to rally the wingers and light a fire under the great white middle. Seems like a dicey proposition to me, but at least it’s a strategy — I’m having trouble seeing what cards Culver holds at all. He can’t really go back to the Vilsack economic development playbook and expect it to fly this year… though I suspect you’re going to hear an awful lot about “green jobs” in any case. Who’s going to have his back? Labor? Meh. Teachers, maybe? If he wins, it will be by virtue of voter apathy, republican ineptitude, and his control of an increasingly creaky and unreliable political machine.
With two losers squaring off, it’s hard to pick a winner. One way or another, we all lose.
I really should have left a few bon mots for others rather than grabbing them all myself. Maybe that’s why I felt a bit queasy today. (I knew it couldn’t really have anything to do with the booze.)
Just out of intellectual curiosity, I wonder whether Branstad was hoping, when he left Terrace Hill, that he might just take a few years off and then run for Senate once a realistic opening appeared. If so, I can at least see how he would have finally decided to give up on waiting.
As for Chet, it’s funny; I think I’ve heard more about him lately than I have about Ohio’s governor. Admittedly, I’ve read about Chet during my captivated-by-train-wreck following of the Big XII’s demise, but still, Ted Strickland seems to have pulled off an amazing disappearing act. As strategies go, it might not be the worst one for incumbents to try this year.
I’d always assumed Branstad’s instinct in leaving the first time was to get out while the getting was good. I guess that’d mean he reckons the getting’s getting good again for getting back in. I don’t get it, myself…
Much more interesting to watch will be Conlin vs Grassley. Sources quoted in this Register article reckon she has a real shot…
http://bit.ly/abso8l
Y’know, I saw that this morning. From what I know of Conlin, she would be great, though of course it wouldn’t take much to improve on Chuck, who has sadly reduced himself to just another brick in the obstructionist wall.
Oddly enough, it seems as though Ohio might also stand a chance of going to all-Democratic Senate representation this year. Such an outcome in either or both states would go a long way to taking some sting out of the presumed butt-kicking for Democrats generally.