all this hoo-hah about the iowa caucuses reminds me of the year jimmy carter stole the iowa caucuses, but i'll tell that story in a minute. first i want to say, it was snowing cats and dogs here out in the southern rockies, and the school told us we could come get our kids if we wanted, since it wasn't likely to get any better, so we did, and came home, and now we're sitting here in what's left of a snowstorm wondering if they will clear the roads. the kids are all out on their own devices.

1980, i believe, i lived in an old shack down on the near-south side of iowa city, near the armory and the old a & p, just on the other side of the tracks. it was a neighborhood that was somewhat hollowed out by urban renewal and is almost totally gone, i.e. not houses, these days, because the town has grown. really the near south side was the post office, the catholic school, and the courthouse, but this was on the other side of the tracks - near, yet maybe three quarter mile from downtown.

in terms of people it was entirely mixed. i was for jerry brown, who was kind of a hippie governor of california, but i was the only one, and it seemed obvious that the others would need me to bolster their case. the others were, basically, fred harris and jimmy carter. jimmy carter had this guy hamilton jordan who was working for him; jordan was a hustler, a mover & shaker, someone who got things done. jimmy did nothing to control him and probably did not even know what was going on.

the iowa caucuses were not big in 1980. in fact it was jordan's idea, or someone in the carter organization, to use them to distinguish him from a number of other candidates who were all much like those we have today. but the idea that it was the first stop of a long campaign - nobody had even thought of it back then. new hampshire was still considered first. caucusing as a way of choosing delegates was also unknown on the national stage. it was almost like what we did was a secret to everyone except us.

jordan, i think, looked around the state and said, some of these counties are going to be very predictable. the farm country, say, goes for harris (i'm not sure that was true), or, the cities, they'll all go for someone else. for some reason this one little precinct of iowa city was very important to him, because it didn't really fit into the stereotypes of the other precincts. it was just kind of unlabeled.

i'm not sure why i would have preferred harris over carter; i'm not even sure why i liked brown. brown, i think, was the only one clearly not in favor of some war. but i hadn't really thought about which way i'd go if brown wasn't viable. obviously, if i was the only brown supporter, he wasn't viable. i had to choose someone, and i chose harris.

at that time harris and carter were tied, so my choice effectively meant that harris won our precinct. however, carter won. my impression of this was that there was behind-closed-doors negotiating, and somehow, when it was over, jordan was able to claim our precinct as his. now it could be that i simply wasn't aware of some other candidate's supporters throwing the whole thing out of balance. but from my point of view, i cast the deciding vote against carter, and he won anyway.

jordan made sure that the whole political world knew that carter had won iowa and in particular the precincts that were wide-open. from that moment on, the iowa caucuses were a thing and played a major role in every election from then on. i was a little angry and never voted for carter, not in 80, not in 84, ever. even today i consider him a fine role model, a christian, a nice guy, but he was someone who couldn't control his workers, or pass along his sense of morality to them, such that they wouldn't throw an election. this also showed when his cia overthrew the government of nicaragua (i believe), or maybe el salvador, while he was talking about human rights. he was big on human rights. but some of his workers were more like, i'll get this done, that's what i do for a living, and i'll cheat if i have to.

the caucuses are supposed to ensure that the people of the democratic party, who take the time to go to the neighborhood meetings, decide who the delegates are and the proportion of delegates represents roughly the proportion of their support among the people. really iowa would do better to hold them later, when they could have the same effect numerically, but skip all the fanfare from the national press, and people like hamilton jordan, who was probably never very comfortable in a farm kitchen. jordan, i think, got caught up in some cocaine scandal, but if i remember correctly, he wasn't the only one; he had a kind of sidekick. i'm not sure if i ever met these guys either. while i was in iowa i got in the habit of going and meeting them if i could, so i saw harris, but actually met john glenn and a few others. i heard edward kennedy speak one time. you could just meet these people if you wanted to. but why would i want to? they were there because the feeling of power had moved their bones. carter was not different from them in that respect. you can be a good and religious man, and still have power move your bones.