Christmas, Campaign An Awkward Mix In Iowa

Washington Post: The Presidential Campaign And The Holidays Are Tripping Over One Another

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Joel Achenbach.

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Chris Dodd, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, has been rolling across Iowa in what he calls the "Twelve Days of Results" tour. It's like the 12 Days of Christmas -- only with themes such as "Results To Protect Homeowners" replacing all that "10 Lords a-Leaping" business.

The tour ends Monday at noon in the town of Carroll, where the candidate will help box up care packages for National Guardsmen stationed overseas ("Results For a New American Community"). Then the Dodd campaign goes dark, as they say on Broadway. He'll treat staffers to ice-skating on Christmas Day, followed by hot chocolate and holiday cheer at his rented home (other candidates campaign here; he lives here). But no speeches.

"I have a pretty good ear, and it would take a tin ear to give a stump speech on Christmas Eve," Dodd says.

The presidential campaign and the holidays are tripping over one another. It's a little awkward. Many people don't want the sacred tarnished by the profane. At a subconscious level, everyone understands that red-meat politics doesn't mix with tinsel and mistletoe.

Because many states jockeyed for earlier positions on the primary-election calendar, Iowa scheduled its caucuses for a date, Jan. 3, that clings to 2008 by its fingernails -- and is just nine days after Christmas. Candidates who have feverishly campaigned throughout 2007, many of them having visited all of Iowa's 99 counties, must suddenly experiment with such novel practices as silence. For at least a couple of days here, the only decent thing a candidate can do is disappear.

Many campaigns shut down after a flurry of events on Saturday. Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, had a final rally late Sunday afternoon in Council Bluffs. Hillary Clinton's camp scheduled a party Sunday night for staffers, volunteers and hopelessly trapped-in-Iowa journalists. Most candidates will go into campaign mode again sometime on Wednesday.

In recent days, campaign buses have journeyed from one twinkling, reindeer-guarded event to another. Teenagers in Waterloo attended a Mike Huckabee event wearing shirts saying "Merry Christmas and a Huckabee New Year." Mitt Romney drew well over 1,000 people to a West Des Moines holiday party at which the post-speech music was not the standard campaign-trail, get-yourself-to-the-polls pop tune, but rather "Silent Night."

Jackie Dodd, the senator's wife, told supporters Thursday night at a holiday party, "I think this is the cruelest trick that's ever been played on Iowa, to make it so you have to focus on the caucuses at the same time you are focusing on the holidays."

Some residents see no conflict.

"It's an interesting time frame to couple them together. Prayer and action. 'Faith without works is dead.' That's what the Word says," said Sara DeMeulenaere of Des Moines, who describes herself as a "messianic believer."

Pastor Bill Devlin, who is touring Iowa for a nonpartisan group called Redeem the Vote, said: "I think it's perfectly appropriate to talk about politics around the Christmas table. I think this is something Jesus would want us to do."

Any discussion of the Christmas/caucus overlap must acknowledge one underappreciated fact: Many Iowans don't caucus. Reporters typically interview people who are attending political events. Wander a couple of blocks away and you'll find all manner of citizens who will be at home on the night of Jan. 3, watching the Orange Bowl.

For those who do caucus, the Christmasization of the campaign threatens, in turn, to politicize Christmas. Take Marcie Hagge, a teacher in Cedar Falls, who says she'll host the usual family bash with the traditional dinner of chili and oyster stew (which she assures us are two entirely separate pots of food). She has family members arriving at her home not only from all points of the compass but also from all wavelengths of the political spectrum.

"It's a new phenomenon," she says of the Christmas/caucus overlap. She'll keep things civil, even if her brother, Ron, the Republican, says something she disagrees with. In Iowa this year, she says, "A lot of decisions are going to be made around the Christmas table."

But not at Judy Estabrook's house. Estabrook, another Democrat, will also have a big family get-together at her home in Waterloo, but she'll have a strict no-politics rule. "I have a son that gets belligerent. He's a hard-core Republican."

There's a general assumption that attack ads don't work well in Iowa in general, and that may be doubly true in this season of peace on Earth and good will toward men. The rules are likely to change at about 12:01 a.m. Dec. 26.

For now, many candidates have adapted to the calendar by Christmasizing their ads on TV and the Web, with varying degrees of solemnity and campiness. (Watch the ads)

In the campy category would be Rudy Giuliani's ad, in which he wears what one assumes is a borrowed bright-red sweater vest, and vows to give everyone not only a safer America and lower taxes but also "a really nice fruitcake with a big red bow on it."

Fred Thompson's holiday ad has no narration at all, just still images of U.S. soldiers serving abroad as a piano renders a poignant "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

Sen. John McCain's ad recounts how a compassionate North Vietnamese prison guard approached him and, without saying a word, drew a cross in the sand one Christmas while he was a prisoner of war.

Barack Obama's warm and fuzzy ad features his wife and adorable kids, a Christmas tree, a fire in the hearth (looks like gas and not real wood) and the candidate's central campaign theme that "the things that unite us as a people are more powerful and enduring than anything that sets us apart."

Clinton's ad shows her with Christmas presents, onto which she is slipping envelopes labeled "Universal Health Care" and "Alternative Energy" and so forth. "Where could I put 'Universal Pre-K'?" she asks, before discovering precisely the right package.

But no Christmas ad has generated as much interest and controversy as the one from Huckabee, a kind of visual Hallmark card in which the candidate talks directly to the camera about celebrating "the birth of Christ." The spot incited much Internet buzz about whether it contains a subliminal image of a cross in the background.

Huckabee counterattacked, saying at a speech in West Des Moines that the controversy "has revealed to us just how far we've slipped in our culture." He also joked that if you play the commercial backward, it says "Paul is dead" (a reference to the '60s-era rumor that Beatles lyrics and album images had coded messages about the death of Paul McCartney).

What has resonated with many Iowans is that in the ad Huckabee doesn't say the all-purposed secular greeting "Happy Holidays" but rather uses the words "Christ," "God" and, most important, "Merry Christmas."

Mike Waggoner, a professor at the University of Northern Iowa who edits a journal on religion and education, says of Iowans, "I know they find it refreshing for someone to say, 'Doggone it, Merry Christmas.'"

[hillary4sout]

EX VET IM VOTEING 4 HILLARY SHE IS FOR VETS I DID MY TIME IN SERVICE WHILE YOU WHERE MARCHING YOU NUT .. I WAS SURVING MY COUNTRY YOU DO NOTHING BUT BASH THE ONE PERSON THAT CAN ACTUALLY END THIS CONFLICT WE ALL STARTED THIS WAR YOU NUTS...... AMERICA NOW SHE WANT TO HELP END IT SHE VOTED LIKE ALL OF THEM DID TO FUND IT YOU NUTS FUND US TROOPS SO WE COULD HAVE WHAT WE NEEDED TO FIGHT WHATEVER DONT YOU FORGET IT WE WHERE FIGHTING YOU WHERE MARCHING A** . YOU MAKE ME SICK OBAMA VOTED TO FUND IT TO BEFORE YOU POINT FINGERS. POINT AT ALL WHO DID IT HE IS A LIER .. HE VOTED TO FUND OR SUPPORT IT DONT YOU DARE PUT THIS ALL ON HILLARY SHE IS FIGHTING NOW TO HELP US VETS TO GET THE HEALTH CARE WE NEED YOU DONT HAVE A CLUE .. YOU JUST HATER AND FEAR HER SO MUCH THAT YOU WILL LET THE REAL WAR STARTERS GET BACK IN OFFICE SHAME ON YOU IM SO SO ASHAMED AT SOME OF YOU. HILLARY CAN AND WILL END THIS WAR AN HELP GET THE MILITARY BACK WHAT IT NEEDS TO DEFEND THE COUNTRY ASK GEN. WES CLARK.. SHE IS THE ONLY ONE .... VETS FOR HILLARY 08

GOD SAVE AMERICAS DEMS....
HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT

[coolprophet]

RON PAUL RESISTS SPECIAL INTEREST
In Congress, Ron Paul is not only known for his lack of ego (a rare quality in D.C.), he''s widely admired for his resistance to the influence of special interest groups. Again. They don''t call him "Dr. No" for no reason. He consistanly votes against pork-barrel spending. In a rice-growing, cattle-ranching district, Paul consistently votes against farm subsidies. In the very district where, in 1900, a storm destroyed the city of Galveston, and where repairs and refugees from Hurricane Katrina continue to exact their toll, he votes against FEMA (the poster child for inept agencies) and flood aid. In a district that is home to thousands of employees of the Johnson Space Center, he votes against financing NASA. Nothwithstanding this, his constituants in the 14th District of Texas continue to re-relect him. Why? You ask? I think one voter I talked to there summarized it nicely when she said, "We may not like his vote. But we trust his heart." Even Tim Delaney, the editorial-page editor of The Victoria Advocate, an influential newspaper in the district, which has generally opposed Paul, on the grounds that a lone wolf cannot get the homeland-security financing he says the district needs, said, "Ron Paul is a very charismatic person. He has charm. He does not alter his position ever. His ideals are high. If a little old man calls up from the farm and says, I need a wheelchair, he''ll get the *** wheelchair for him. Ron Paul is a man of integrity."

[hillary4sout]

HILLARY PULLS AHEAD UMMM U ASK ME WAS SHE EVER BEHIND LOL DDDDDDDDDDDAAAAAAAAAAAA DUM DUMS WHO BELIVE THE MIDIA REPORTS HILLARY WILL WIN SLID N THE WHITE HOUSE BECUASE SHE IS, LETS SAY READY ON DAY ONE TO LEAD THE NATION, HILL, EVEN THE GOP KNOWS THAT JUST ASK ROVE LOL OR MABE W BUSH WHO IS ALL BUT SHOWING HER HOW SMOOTH HER TRANSITION WILL BE AN FOR ALL YOU GOP WHO ARE DISCUSTED WITH YOUR OWN PARTY AN SEE HOW LIBERAL IT HAD BECOME CHECK THIS OUT HILLARY USE TO BE A REPUBLICAN SHE IS THE REAL FISICAL CONSIRVATIVE IN THIS RACE THAT WHY YOU ARE AFRAID OF HER SHE IS GONNA WHIP YA LIKE YOU STOLE SOMETHING IN THE GENERAL ELECTION SO GIVE UP NOW COME TO OUR SIDE AND ALL THE MONEY YOU GIVE TO OBAMA WILL NOT STOP HER ONE BIT.. HILLARY OUR NEXT PRESIDENT 08 THANKS GOD.

[cfin5]

jedi08,.....Check out the Constitution Party (constitutionparty.com). That is where I''m staying put......I think I''ll start Christmas off right this morning with some "Creole Bacon Gravy" over homegrown butter fried potatoes done on my wood burning cook stove........Yummy!

[jedi08]

Its funny to compair the two campaigns. The dems are arguing over who did coke and who has the middle name saddam while the Republican''s argue over who said merry christmas first. Thats why, I''ll always be a republican, higher standards and morals.

[creeper00]

Posted from Iowa.

"There''s a general assumption that attack ads don''t work well in Iowa in general..."

Neither do the Christmas commercials from candidates that we''ve been inundated with.

There''s a time to campaign and a time to celebrate Christmas. The two are not compatible. I''ve noted every Christmas commercial polluting our airwaves and removed those candidates from my list of possibles.

We Iowans are not stupid. That''s one of the reasons the rest of the country has been mostly content to allow us to voice our preferences first.

On January 3 I will walk the seven blocks to our high school and stand for the candidate of my choice. It will not be one of those who has poisoned my Christmas season with a transparently self-serving "Merry Christmas" ad.

[harp1963]

Today''s politicians have redefined "false prophets" for the modern age. George Bush has probably driven more people from Christianity than any modern leader I can think of. His proclaimations don''t match his "works."

I just wish he would have included some pro-life requirements (or any human rights requirement for that matter) for China to maintain the free trade bill with America that was created by supposed "Christian pro-life" Republicans and signed into law by a self proclaimed pro-life President George Bush.

The reality of their "convulse and Praise the Lord" politics is that it''s only to buy gullible voters votes. These people are greed monger Greedipublicans who live in Greedmongerrepublicanville. The only thing they really wanted in China was slave labor and the destruction of Unions in America.