I confess to growing increasingly uncomfortable in the continuance of the mythos I've helped grow in multiple scholarly articles and in my 2015 political novel, "Corn Poll." I see the many ways in which our caucus perpetuates the myth of our singular virtue and soundness of judgment.
In the popular imagination, caucus night in Iowa surely looks like a scene from some Frank Capra movie, as salt-of-the-earth citizens, roused by an upwelling of patriotic feeling, hash out long-standing political differences via impassioned speeches delivered on behalf of their chosen man or woman. In that dreamy movie version, high-spirited friends and neighbors continue the plucky debate late into the evening, before shuffling off to bed with a renewed faith in democracy. Perhaps a gentle snow falls overnight as the presidential hopefuls fitfully slumber, and everyone wakes the following morning to a slate wiped clean and a purified landscape of promise.
What makes the myth of the Iowa caucuses so hard to let go is the fact that much of it is true. Iowans still do gather face to face in the most unassuming settings to adjudicate the political fates of candidates for the nation's highest office. My hometown of just over 400 souls convenes in a building that was once the town morgue and is now listed in the registry of official polling sites as the comically generic "Gathering Place." Before Gathering Place, we met in the local volunteer firehouse, in whose kitchen election workers unfailingly popped popcorn for us on an old gas stove. Outside observers told us our little corn poll seemed too good to be true, like a fairy tale from some populist gloaming.
But it's also true that our precious electoral unicorn belies appearances. Attendance, which often tallies less than a quarter of registered Iowa Republicans, is paltry. Fiery public speeches made on behalf of candidates are rare in stoical small towns like mine. A caucus night that in the political imagination lasts well into the wee hours often wraps in real life in less time than it takes to stream a sitcom.
We come, we listen to a few brief but meaningful words, we write the name of our preferred candidate on a slip of bright white office paper, and we leave in less than 20 minutes, sometimes without introducing ourselves to newcomers or greeting longtime neighbors. Meanwhile, the results of our straw poll have often been inaccurate, missing or otherwise marred by controversy, as in 2012 when the Iowa caucuses were rocked by charges of voting irregularities in a contest initially declared for Mitt Romney, only to be called two weeks later in favor of Rick Santorum.
Despite a sometimes dubious track record, the essential promise of caucus night holds true: anything can happen. Dark horse hopefuls, those dutiful door-knockers and proponents of visiting all of Iowa's 99 counties in the strategy known as "The Full Grassley," can and do overtake pre-anointed candidates in a photo-finish too close to call until the following morning. Acts of political skulduggery persist in the form of 11th-hour text messages and calls from anxious campaigns looking to cast shade or inculcate doubt.
