The Future of Iowa Grassroots Politics
by Paul Deaton
"In Iowa, young people are leaving the state in droves
and this begs the question of the relevance and longer term viability of Iowa
in the national debate."
On
the dust cover of The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe, it says,
“Plouffe was not just the architect of the campaign that put Barack Obama in
the White House; he also built a grassroots movement that changed the face of
politics forever and re-energized the idea of democracy itself.” A bit self
serving on the part of the publisher, Viking Penguin, but of course it would
be. If
the campaign Plouffe organized changed the face of politics, the citizenry does
not like the way it looks, especially the partisan visage we see on the 111th
Congress and the President’s inability to pass many of his major initiatives
during his first year in office.
Regardless of what happened during the run up to the
2008 Presidential Election, a grassroots movement, by its nature, can seldom be
replicated in the same way or with the same energy. This is not to denigrate
the work Plouffe and the legions of staff and volunteers did, but to say that
campaigns are the stuff of dreams, woven in delicate silk mixed with coarse
jute fibers. The utility of such cloth is of short duration.
In the Iowa precinct where I live, the coalition we
built for the 2008 election included people of every demographic and every
political viewpoint. We could see the harm being done by the previous
administration and a dysfunctional congress. It was time to “take back our
government.” Having done that, we figuratively turned over the keys on inauguration
day and did not look back. We elected the president and congress and after the
election, expected them to govern. Most of us have a life outside of partisan
politics.
It is unlikely this same coalition will come together
again in 2012 and more certainly, not in this year’s midterm elections. A
grassroots organization is always changing and political campaigns are
notoriously different, one from the other. Conservatives where I live have
woken up and are saying the same thing we did, “it’s time to take our
government back.” The next two election cycles will be challenging for
those of us in the party in power, in the same way the opposition was
challenged in 2008.
For people who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, we
wonder how many more times we can engage in these campaigns. A friend of mine
wrote in an e-mail, “My own personal perspective, however, is that after
spending decades of of my life fighting for environmental/political/social
progress, including rising again and again from the coals after temporary
'burn-outs', I honestly have reached the end-of-my-rope regarding the
battles and no longer care to expend time or energy doing so further.” This
view is not uncommon in my cohort. Many of us will fire up the boiler again,
yet there is a constraint on the degree to which we can continue to be active
in campaigns. Likewise, the older we get, the more it is not about us.
In Iowa, young people are leaving the state in droves
and this begs the question of the relevance and longer term viability of Iowa
in the national debate. Iowans value the millions of dollars spent in the state
as each presidential cycle unfolds. Being first in the nation presents an
opportunity for those campaign dollars to be spent here and it is one place
where the two major political parties agree. Too, Iowa continues to be an
active participant in shaping national policy. When we consider the national
discussion on health care reform, we can see how Iowans helped shape policy
among the candidates in 2007, and ultimately in Washington in the 111th
Congress. If Iowa does not engage our sons and daughters enough for them to
stay in the state, Iowa may lose its relevancy and the continuing opportunity
to shape the national debate.
When I think of David Plouffe and the work he did, I
also think of James Carville and his role during the first campaign of Bill
Clinton. While once considered to be brilliant, with time, Carville has become
a craggy and irrelevant talking head on networks that no longer engage us. I
hope this is not Plouffe’s fate.
Let’s hope children born in the 1980s and after do not
cling to the excitement of the 2008 election cycle, but learn from it, let go and
continue to engage in local and national politics. Many of the
twenty-somethings I know have already done this and are waiting for us to catch
up. All we can do is say we are trying.
