Swing State Swing: Iowa

We asked our chief political writer, David Paul Kuhn, to get in a car and drive from Portland, Maine to Portland, Ore., via all the Battleground States – those states expected to be the most hotly contested in the presidential election. Armed with a pen, laptop, camera and plenty of No Doz, Kuhn is sending back dispatches that will offer impressions and snapshots of a country making up its mind.

Buffalo Center

Keith Kyle believes both major party candidates are "living in a realm of high finance, big money, things of this nature. They don't have any contact with the average American, at least they appear not to."

The 47-year-old former Air Force man says: "Both candidates have difficulty being in touch with reality. I'm going to probably end up voting for Bush because I do like his policies. But both of them are out of touch."

Standing just across the border in Minnesota, his beard covers his neck, falling nearly to the flannel shirt he has on. Keith explains that "at least" he does "understand where [Bush] is coming from, his policies. Kerry has been very very vague, almost non-descript. He keeps saying things, hell I could say'em."

He once voted Democratic. Bill Clinton lost him. "When he came into the office he beat up on the military," Keith continues, his friend waiting beside their truck behind. "[Clinton] really didn't fund us the way we needed to be funded."

Ken voted for George W. Bush in 2000. Proudly, he'll do it again. Ken votes Republican because "I like their views." He's always been that way, an unchanged man.

He says Marshall Town has changed. It's bigger with different people - Mexican Americans.

George Bush is big around here, but Al Gore won the state in 2000 - though only by about 4,000 votes. Bill Clinton had won it by nearly 10 percentage points. Democrats, by no means, have a lock in this rural state.

For nearly half a century, Ken's been coming and going from this state, driving his rig.

"Anytime you can sit down and work its pretty easy work," he grins. Ken often returns to the same bars and diners in the same places. Places he's passed more times than he can count.

"There's a diner in Pennsylvania on Route 78. It's about two exits east of Harrisburg," he says, his arms crossed. "Cupstown" is the name. That's his favorite.

Mowing the lawn, his 130 acres of corn rising up to the horizon behind, Tim says he's a Republican, and will vote for George W. Bush.

"I like the way he's straightforward," 44-year-old Tim says. "He just tells you the way it is."

Tim's farm, 20 miles northeast of Des Moines, has been in his family for three generations.

"People kind of got a different idea of what a family farm is." Tim talks as his son looks on. "I mean, the farms have gotten bigger. But everyone I know, a family farms 'em. If you are going to have two or three families living off one farm you've got to get bigger."

Somewhere between farming in Iowa and the politics of Washington D.C., Tim navigates his words. He's sick of people complaining about farm subsidies. "Do away with'em," he blurts, daring consumers to see what happens.

He says farming just keeps getting harder and harder. "Low crop prices and high inputs," is the crux of it. "I truck on the side," he says, explaining how he supports his family. Tim tells of almost every farmer he knows doing something on the side.

Corn is no longer enough in Iowa. Yet farm subsidies matter little to Tim when put beside abortion or Iraq. These are the issues that govern his vote.

But he's "not real sure about" Iraq, he explains, smoking a cigarette. "But now that we are there I want them to finish them off. No political pressure. I don't care what any other country says. This is our problem. We don't need to be told what to do by any other countries. I want my kids to grow up in a safe America."

John Kerry is "just another liberal," he says. "I don't know how a man can think that abortion is immoral yet doesn't want to do anything about it."

"Then he says how he would have done things differently in Iraq. Like what? Let's hear what you would have done differently. Don't blow about it and not give any specifics," Tim continues. "And then he says he's going to get out in a certain amount of time. But hell, that's what the terrorists want to hear, 'We'll just wait you out.'"

"I think [John Kerry's] very presidential. I think he's got the kind of magnetism and, oh, the kind of aura of a president," she explains. In a plaid shirt, with a nervous giggle and a round face, Jackie is strolling with her husband Paul.

"Paul and Jackie Clark" was how she introduced herself. But a feminist she is, just a quiet one. From Iowa Falls, she and her husband came to Des Moines for the state fair.

"It was so crowded we couldn't get close to the fair grounds," she says. "Everything was full so we decided to take a look at the capital and the monuments."

It is a beautiful capital in Des Moines. A main road leads right up to the dark brick building, where long green lawns roll up to the classical Roman steps.

Des Moines is the epicenter of retail politics. This is where the political world gathers every four years. Iowa has the first-in-the nation caucus, the first contest of people who want to be president. They know politics here.

Come autumn the seven electoral votes of Iowa get paid little heed. This year is different. President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are visiting here, crossing paths as they did in Davenport only a few weeks ago.

But for Jackie, letting her opinions out is not so easy.

"I'll probably put a Kerry sign in my yard," she says, giggling, smiling shyly. This is a big deal for her. She's never put a political sign in her yard before. In Jackie's world, the state of American politics has come to this.

"I want [John Kerry] to win because I don't like what's happening in our country right now," she explains. "I don't care for the way we are going about our security. I think things have been kind of, I think it was more reaction then it was thinking about it, what might happen to our whole way of government. I mean Iraq and I mean Homeland Security."

She hopes Kerry "can be more subtle and be able to deal with other countries better and just not react to things and bring about laws that cause such big changes in our way of governing."

Jackie respects subtle people. She loved Teresa Heinz-Kerry's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

"She's a very down to earth, a warm human person," suddenly Jackie livens up. She grew up on a farm in Idaho. Just retired, she moved to Iowa 14 years ago. "I also worked for about 20 years as a technician, so I dealt with a lot of those kinds of things that she was talking about so I felt I understood exactly what she was saying.

"She talks very quiet. She talks very carefully. But what she says is very powerful," Jackie says. "I think Laura Bush is a nice first lady too, but I think both she and the president are much more scripted in the way they speak, you know. That was one thing that I find refreshing about Teresa Kerry is, she is very honest with her answers. I know she gets criticized for it but I think that's wonderful."

And Jackie smiles widely for the first time.

Michael disdains his president, but not because of the man George W. Bush is. It's the Iraq war he waged "without cause." It's the weapons of mass destruction still unfound. It's his stand on gay marriage.

From a farm in northern Iowa, Michael lives in Des Moines. He runs a silver bus that tells a non-partisan - not even political - story of Midwest POWs in World War II. He has short hair and wears a tucked-in black tank-top.

He's taken his "bus-eum" through 205 Iowa communities in 10 weeks. It's been to all 99 Iowa counties.

The "bus-eum" relates to today's politics, he says. "For a long time during this war the most American soldieries in Iraq were coming from Iowa." Still speaking quickly, he says: "If they took the same number of young people from Boston, or from New York, or from Philadelphia or Los Angeles there would be an outcry."

By David Paul Kuhn