Abstract

The Iowa Surprise

The author discusses the campaign strategies of the Democratic presidential candidates who came out ahead in the Iowa caucuses, and analyzes why Howard Dean, the former front-runner, came in third. Everything about Howard Dean's "Iowa Perfect Storm" strategy seemed to go perfectly, right up to the point at which Iowans actually started voting in the first-in-the-nation caucuses that began the process of selecting the Democratic nominee for President. The former Vermont governor, who barely a week earlier had topped polls of prospective caucus-goers, finished far behind a pair of US senators whom he had dismissed as hopelessly weighed down by their Washington "insider" status--John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina. So what happened to Dean? As he stumbled in debates and bungled policy pronouncements, the presumed front-runner took hits from all sides--including some of the roughest media coverage accorded a candidate since George McGovern got the "liberal loser" treatment in 1972. Dean was the original "Beat Bush" candidate, but Kerry and Edwards radically altered their campaigns to present themselves as stronger applicants for the title. Dean, who more than anyone else has flamed the contest for the 2004 Democratic nomination, must now recognize that he is no longer unique: Kerry, Edwards and Clark have stolen his themes and approaches and buffed them up in what appears to many Democrats to be a more electorally appealing form--just as Clinton stole Paul Tsongas's anti-deficit rap after Tsongas beat him in New Hampshire in 1992.