For 2012 candidates, a holiday weekend in Iowa

Since everybody seems to be writing about Sarah Palin now, a few thoughts about Iowa - a state she will NOT be visiting on her much-covered bus tour.

It's the conventional wisdom that this bus tour may also serve as a kick-off for Palin's presidential campaign. If so, she is heading in an odd direction, i.e., north from Washington instead of west toward the Hawkeye state. Iowa voters like to inspect candidates as closely as a veterinarian does a horse. Out here, in the land of unremitting tornadoes and home to the Feb. 6 caucuses, Ms. Palin's bus tour will be watched - but from afar.

Up close, Iowa Republicans will be looking over the likes of Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and Michele Bachmann.

Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, will be at a Memorial Day Pancake Breakfast in Waukee, Iowa, speaking to those assembled before heading off to a meet-and-greet cookout in Ft. Dodge. It's the kind of retail politics Iowans are used to - and indeed expect - from vote-seekers, declared or undeclared. Pawlenty has announced he is running for president and by visiting Waukee and Ft. Dodge, he is emphasizing the "running" part.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who spent $10 million in losing the caucuses in 2008, is speaking today at the State Historical Building in downtown Des Moines. He threw in a walk-and-talk event earlier and will head to eastern Iowa later at a gala hosted by the Linn and Johnson County Republican committees. His events in Iowa further underline his apparent intentions to run for the presidency, and, more important, his decision not to pass up the caucuses, however painful was his treatment the last time around. (He finished a disappointing second to Gov. Mike Huckabee.)

Meanwhile, Rep. Bachmann of Minnesota said yesterday that she intends to announce her decision on whether to join the Republican presidential race next month during a visit to her birth place of Waterloo, Iowa. In an April 29 interview, Bachmann said her strategy -- should she decide to run -- would be to fuse the support of socially conservative voters in Iowa and South Carolina with that of Tea Party backers in New Hampshire. Today on an Iowa public affairs program, Bachmann said she felt a "calling" to seek the GOP nomination.

"I've had this calling and tugging on my heart that this is the right thing to do," she told the program Iowa Press. "People want something new and different, and that's one thing I've established with my voting record."

And she added that her decision will be "completely unique and unrelated to any other candidate."

Including those, like Sarah Palin, who remain far, far away. And while she may drum up considerable media attention as she buses her way through the Northeast, Palin might do well to keep in mind the old phrase, "Out of sight. Out of mind." It might well describe the feelings of Iowa's Republican caucus-goers toward those who deign not to visit.