Magic politics

I could dig out one of my old press cards, slip it into my fedora, jet off to someplace I've never been. I could spend a couple of days there, talk to a few native chiefs and their subjects and then write the definitive news feature.

I could explain the "mood of the people," their strange way of life, their deepest beliefs,  their aspirations. It would be printed and read worldwide. And like the Washington Post, I could expect you take it seriously, not that you should.

Reporter Michael Leahy drew the assignment and filed a lengthy, graceful, and even witty report on whom we Iowans will permit you to vote for in the joust to wrest world leadership from Barack Obama.

His journalism is not to be faulted if you are willing to accept the Heart of Darkness literary device of truth explored in a microcosm.  Conrad put his his narrator and audience on a becalmed yawl. Leahy puts his in Sioux County, Iowa, and concludes that Tim Pawlenty is leading as we await the big wind. It is all very poetic as he weaves the threads of political lust into the fabric of our declared values -- God, home, hard work, and "Iowa niceness."

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we flimflammed another one of them big-city reporters.

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In  the spring of 2008 a good evangelical state official from a place near Sioux County had been beside himself. Who should he endorse at his GOP caucus?  The whole world was wondering, don't you know.  The whole world got its answer when, one morning, my man sat down at my dining table and grinned, "I just got $1,000 from John McCain."

That's how it's really done.

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Every  serious aspirant to 1600 Pennsylvania has a rich PAC.  Pawlenty's (Freedom First, ha-ha)  has about $3 million and counting.  Each PAC has a hefty Iowa allocation. Each  PAC's function is to buy support. Pawlenty is a Pacman  who started early, contributing to state candidates for the 2010 elections.; some $7,000 to the guy who is now our House speaker, quite a lot to our secretary of agriculture, and so forth.

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That's a dreary dose for a bright Sunday morning, so let's return Mr. Leahy's wit as he rides around with State Senator Randy Feenstra of Hull

(Feenstra) pointed at an enormous structure through which hundreds of squatty blurry animals can be seen .... “Hog confinements,” he said brightly. “Produce manure — fantastic manure... 


"Past the magic manure, Feenstra remembered something else ..."


Mr. Leahy, I bet you loved writing "magic manure" just as much as I'm going to love stealing the phrase.