Work brought me to Iowa last week and I went expecting, even looking forward to seeing first-hand evidence of the GOP race for president. But apart for the political ads playing silently on the TV over the bar at Lefty’s in tiny Mt. Ayr, I saw little indication that a competitive race was brewing. Just one month from now events in Iowa will dictate the next chapter of the 2012 presidential election. But things were very quiet. No farms had signs out for one candidate or another that I saw, and I don’t remember a single bumper sticker.
Even though I interviewed more than two dozen people (albeit not about politics) the coming caucuses never came up, even in casual conversation.
When I did hear the election discussed, it was by outsiders. My trip coincided with a taping of the “Political Gabfest” a weekly podcast produced by the online magazine Slate.com on the campus of Grinnell College.
The Political Gabfest is one of about a half dozen weekly political wrap-up programs I download and listen to. Most that I listen to, like the “Washington Week” podcast or “Left, Right and Center” from KCRW in Santa Monica, are downloaded versions of broadcast programs. But the Slate Political Gabfest exists only as a podcast - with occasional live shows.
This format makes it generally a looser, and more wide ranging show than one having to fit a specific time window. When Washington Week moderator Gwen Ifill was in Madison for a Wisconsin Public Television event, she told us her goal was for that program to feel like a really cool dinner party, where smart guests, like John Dickerson, fill you in on the latest from DC.
Andy Bowers, the podcast producer, told the crowd at Grinnell that he liked shows like Washington Week, but thought the Political Gabfest was more like the insider conversation that goes on in the hallway outside the studio at a Washington Week taping. Common to both scenarios is John Dickerson, who makes up the Gabfest panel along with legal analyst Emily Bazelon and Slate editor David Plotz.
The three expressed amazement at the recent polling showing Newt Gingrich taking an unexpected lead. Interesting conversation, but also interesting that the only discussion about Iowa politics I heard was from people traveling even further from out of the state then I had.
.
