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Where but America can a politician with no obvious advantages apart from being well-organized, energetic, thoughtful, and eloquent go from unknown to political powerhouse in a few short years?

A race with more than a dozen candidates is now focused on Barack Obama and John McCain – one of the youngest presidential candidates in US history vs. one of the oldest. Like a talented running back, Barack Obama has twisted clear of his opposition and now has a clear path to the White House. He has ample time to fumble or get caught from behind — but he is quick, increasingly sure of his moves and unlikely to drop the ball.

How did this happen? Having noted three months ago here that the race was HIllary Clinton’s to lose, I had to go to Iowa to see exactly how she was managing to lose it. What I saw was as close to a revolution as you get in American politics.

Barack Obama is the real deal. He is a driven and experienced organizer, an inspired speaker, and a massively successful fundraiser. He is attracting first rate talent to his campaign and rallying young people and first time voters in record numbers. Like all candidates, he will surely be bloodied and bowed by opponents and by events. He will make mistakes. But if he takes New Hampshire on Tuesday — and I am betting he will — he will very likely become the next President of the United States.

How is this possible? Remember, eight years ago, Obama was so little known that he could not get a floor pass for the Democratic Convention. Four years ago he introduced himself to the party with one of the best speeches ever given at a Democratic convention.

In the late sixties, following the corruption of the Watergate
scandal, American political parties reformed the traditional party
boss-dominated process of selecting delegates to presidential
nominating conventions. Since that time, by accident more than design, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries have become both incubator and abattoir of American political ambitions.

In the Iowa caucuses insurgents are born and  established politicians either fly or die. The
caucuses are to the Presidency what the Scholastic Aptitude Test is to
college admissions: much easier to critique than to replace as a device
for separating the weak from the strong. (Actually, better
approaches are not hard to come by, just hard to implement. Rotating
the first primary among the two of the ten smallest states and staging the
remaining primaries with largest states last would be a huge
improvement. But the US Constitution makes no mention of political
parties, so there is no federal authority to govern such matters. It is up to the states – and New Hampshire has passed a state law declaring that it will always hold the first primary).

The first person to recognize the importance of early primaries was
a southern governor whose national name recognition was less than two
percent. Not only did experts give Jimmy Carter little chance of
winning in 1972, but when Carter told his own family of his intention
to run for President, his mother famously asked him, "President of
what?"

Carter won the Iowa caucus and used the momentum to win the New
Hampshire primary. He pioneered the approach used by every modern
presidential insurgent. John Kerry, a better-known Senator, won both
Iowa and New Hampshire in 2004 against the heavily favored Howard Dean.
Dean’s speech at the conclusion of the Iowa caucus was the unhinged “Dean
scream” that ended his Presidential campaign.

The Iowa caucuses end most Presidential dreams – especially those by
experienced Senators. Since Carter took advantage of the
nominating rules in 1972, current or recent US Senators have run for
President 66 times (my count excludes Senators who had become Vice
Presidents and those who ran as “favorite sons” — i.e., as a convention tactic). The
number who have been nominated? One, John Kerry. Number elected? Zero.

The US Senate is where Presidential aspirations go to die; the snowy fields of Iowa is where they often draw their final
breath. People with twenty plus years of distinguished Senate service often
figure that they are qualified to be President. Often they are smart
enough about the issues and have built the right relationships – but
they have also picked up some deadly habits. They require three
sentences to say what their listeners communicate in one. They talk
about legislation, not issues. They cite accomplishments that sound
hopelessly technical (“..and as one of thirty-three co-sponsors of the
Save American Agricultural Act, I fought for Iowa farmers when my
colleagues were silent. That’s the kind of leadership I will bring
to……). Voters are rarely impressed.

2008 will break this losing streak: both parties are likely to nominate Senators. But
Barack, like Hillary,  is a short termer who ran for the Senate in order to
run for the Presidency. Neither appear to aspire to a long Senate
career. And McCain, if he is smart, will run as a war hero, not a Senator. At his headquarters, he was introduced by Vietnam vets whose stories of McCain’s heroism made men weep. But McCain then wheeled out a trio of right-wing Senators to sing his praises and the room immediately became restless. He should leave his Senate colleagues in the audience.

The 2008 Iowa caucuses will be remembered as especially brutal,
mainly because the remaining states have crowded their primaries ever
closer to Iowa’s. As of sunset on January 3, six serious Democrats and six
Republicans were competing to lead the free
world. Democrats surfaced a remarkably strong field, even if five of the six are or were Senators: Joe Biden, Hillary
Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson.
Republicans offered up Rudy Guiliani (who essentially skipped Iowa),
Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson. This  is not a fired up bunch, mainly because Republicans can count. They know that since World
War II, any party that serves eight years gets replaced. The only
exception was Bush  I, who followed Reagan.

By midnight however, the world had changed. Twelve candidates are
down to five – and three of them are in serious trouble. The remaining seven are either dead or mortally
wounded. Casualties include:

John Edwards, who came in second in Iowa four years ago, did worse this time. In 02 he earned 32% in a four way race. This time he earned 30% of a three-way race. He will not recover. Like NY Governor Elliot Spitzer,
Edwards has decided to play th self-righteous macho populist blasting "greedy corporations" and "the rich" for causing all of the world’s unpleasantness. He is learning the hard way that a confrontational, prosecutorial
demeanor may win passion points but it does not win elections. Voters know that cartoons cannot govern. Edwards is unlikely to win in New Hampshire against Obama, so he
will go into in his home state of South Carolina competing against
Clinton – one of the best names in the state — and a black rock star.
Knowing this, this donors – even labor donors – will demur. Edwards will not
have the money he needs to continue an expensive and compressed primary
schedule through this month. His political career ended last night,
even though his supporters dream otherwise.

Mitt Romney. Dead man walking. His main accomplishment may be to have forced
the party establishment to turn to John McCain. His strategy assumed a
huge win in Iowa. He spent $40-$50 million dollars in the state and
twisted his political positions to accommodate Western Iowa’s
conservative evangelical Christians. But these folks voted for one of
their own – a man who campaigned thematically not programmatically and
whose victory speech last night could have been given by Barack Obama.
Romney is not loved in New Hampshire, which shares media markets with
Massachusetts, so Romney bleeds until Michigan – his home state and the
place where folks over 50 remember his Dad, as a popular governor and
CEO of American Motors (and a man not given to pretending he is
something he is not). Anything but a powerful victory in Michigan means
Romney is done. End of the road for a good man who ran a terrible race.

The demise of Mitt Romney illustrates an interesting phenomenon: successful business people often discover their blind spots when they
seek public office. Romney is in the tradition of businesspeople who
become governors in order to run for President: Virginia’s Mark Warner
and (perhaps) George W. Bush are two others. Businesspeople tend to be
problem-solvers. The best of them articulate their values and
convictions to inspire employees and customers – think of Steve Jobs.
Many have deep technical knowledge about their business – think Bill
Gates at Microsoft or Eric Schmidt at Google.

But politics is more
than problem-solving, as Hillary Clinton is learning. Voters want to
know about your program, but in this election they clearly also want to
know about you – your character, your vision, your general view of the
world. Voters want to know your plans, but in Iowa especially, they
seem to want to know what sort of person you are so they can measure
how you are likely to respond to the inevitable crises that come with the
office.

Mike Huckabee. Dead man flying. The Huckster is a
charming man and a brilliant communicator but he has nothing to
communicate. There is not the slightest chance that Republicans will
nominate another fevered theocrat, however much I might relish the
campaign against one. Iowa Republicans are Jesus freaks – and I did
not say Christians. Huckabee ran fifth among non-evangelicals: his
candidacy is dead and gone to whatever little heaven or hell awaits departed campaigns.

Bill Richardson, Ron Paul, and Fred Thompson are also among the
walking zombies. They will stagger into New Hampshire but will finish
campaigning by the end of this month – and in most cases, well before.
Of these, Richardson is easily the greatest loss. He is an
extraordinary guy, having served as Governor of New
Mexico, Clinton’s Energy Secretary, and US Ambassador to the United
Nations. (Bill Clinton all but created Bill Richardson, appointing him to the UN
twice and to Energy once. This makes rumors that Richadson will endorse
Obama all the more galling to the Clintonistas).

Ron Paul is a Republican Texas Congressman who we visited yesterday
at a Des Moines deli. The man is shriveled, sullen, and appears
to be slightly demented. He is the darling of Internet libertarians – a large and
generous constituency, as it turns out. He has almost no field
organization and sports an aggressively sullen campaign demeanor. We
had Paul to ourselves — it was clear that he had managed to spend several
weeks walking around Iowa in the snow without leaving footprints.

Chris Dodd and Joe Biden are not waiting for New Hampshire: both men
closed down their campaigns last night. The Iowa Democratic Caucus
enforces a 15% viability threshold: if you do not
receive 15% of the votes in any precinct-level caucus, your voters are
told to go find another candidate or to vote undecided. In Precinct 87,
which we visited as observers, neither Dodd, nor Biden, nor Richardson
achieved viability so even though 40 or so voters, a few tearfully
passionate, turned out for these candidates, Precinct 87
reported zero support for any of them.

Joe Biden closed down his third and probably final run for President
with little to show for it. Chris Dodd spent $12 million in Iowa and
put his kids in Des Moines schools only to wind up above an upscale
Italian restaurant consoling his deservedly dispirited staff because
his final tally in Iowa was zero. He did not survive the viability
threshold in even one of Iowa’s 1,784 precincts. Failed campaigns are
as sad as winning ones are thrilling – and in Iowa there are always a
lot of sad ones.

Republican Duncan Hunter and Dems Mike Gravel and
Dennis Kucinich don’t count. They were too weak and frankly too weird
from the start to be politically relevant. Iowa efficiently dispatches
cranks of this sort. Ron Paul would be in this group but for his Internet support.

It is interesting to rate the major candidates on three factors:
their ability to describe their vision of politics, their ability to
outline compelling political plans, and their ability to execute a complex campaign.

 A
compelling vision of politics, especially one that connects with the
life story of the candidate, mattered enormously in this election.
Mike Huckabee is brilliant at this, as is Barack Obama. John Edwards’ ability to bare
his soul is a trademark honed before countless juries. Romney struggles
stiffly to understand what the problem is here. McCain is lousy at this but he gets
a pass because he is a war hero.

Plans obviously matter. All Democrats have plans — typically endlessly complex, expensive, and tailored o stimulate the erogenous zones of key constituencies. Edwards gives out
an 80 page pamphlet full of bullet points. Clinton is nothing but
plans. She tends to fall into her husband’s trademark rapid-fire
recitation of wonkish ideas. Obama has them and can stick to the bullet
points, which do not vary a lot from other Democrat plans — especially if you consider that Congress gets to play with these plans too. Romney has
plans, although they evolve a great deal. McCain has plans because all
Senators have plans. Only Huckabee has no plans – he is literally doing
a wonk rodeo to try to round up some Christian experts to tell him what
he thinks. I cannot wait to see this guy in a debate.

Execution is where the top guns excel: Romney, McCain, Clinton, and
Obama have all raised real money. All have top-notch field
organizations. All can do highly credible media.

Final score out of three:

• Huckabee 1
• Romney 1.5
• Edwards 2
• Clinton  2.5
• Obama a perfect 3.

I’m not sure about
McCain because I have seen too little of his operation. Note however
that the Intertrade (a market in political futures) currently gives
Obama a two-thirds chance of becoming the nominee, Clinton a one-third
chance, and everyone else effectively no chance. For Republicans, it is
McCain 75%, Romney 25%, others zero…

We decided to observe the caucus at precinct 87 in Iowa, mainly
because it was near our hotel. It turns out that the Iowa caucus, like
caucus systems everywhere, are designed for inside party activists –
normal folks need not apply. The process was chaotic, needlessly
time-consuming, and run by the same precinct apparatchiks that had
controlled affairs in this south Des Moines precinct for twenty years.
It was democratic only in a town hall, 19th century sort of way: your
vote is not secret; pressure to defect is continuous; open debate at
the polling place is encouraged and rewarded, and anybody can arrive, register, and vote — which opens the process to all kinds of abuse.

  Last night, many, perhaps most, attendees had never attended a
caucus. Obama’s affinity group was young, fired up, and diverse;
Hillary’s was older, more experienced, and slightly amazed at the Obama turnout,. There
was no obvious tilt by women towards Hilary (indeed Obama polled better
among women age 18-59 than Hillary and one of his better buttons declares "Hot Chicks Dig Obama"). At our
caucus, Hillary and Obama started with a similar number of voters, but
supporters of nonviable candidates moved to the Obama group (amid
raucous cheers) in larger numbers. Hillary is a candidate with strong
positives and strong negatives – she has more trouble than Obama
competing for swing voters.

21st  century technology intruded on this 19th century
process: we knew the results while the voting was still underway. It
became much easier to recruit Obama supporters after about 7:30, when
the networks called the election for him. Thanks to the magic of
Blackberries and cell phones, dozens of people knew immediately. Once
we fired up a PC, we could look at detailed projections while our
caucus voting was still underway (we could very likely have found
projections for our own caucus still in process if 87 was one of the
precincts that the networks polled. Because the networks did entrance
polling, not exit polling and because caucuses, unlike polling places,
have no closing time, the networks ignored their normal restrictions on
reporting while voting is still in process. 

 If everything had worked smoothly, caucuses would have convened at
6:30, shut their doors and counted total attendees at 7:00 sharp as
ours did, conducted a 30 minute scrum during which everybody could try
to persuade everybody else to join their group, blow a whistle after 30
minutes, run a tally to eliminate non-viable groups, then conduct
another 30 minute scrum before taking a final tally. A small and
efficiently run caucus might get that all done by 8:00pm. Ours was
chaotic, in part because it was 50% larger than any ever held. It ran
until after 9:30.

We left and waited for Obama at a fired up victory bash, swaying to
loud rock music and a kid’s drum band that marched straight through the
mob. We looked up to see Hillary giving her speech. We could not hear
her words over the din, but the visuals told the tale. We saw a
tight-lipped Bill Clinton, a symbol of 1992 and clearly not happy with
third place in what could become a referendum on his legacy. We saw
Madeleine Albright, a symbol of 1997 and a botched Rwanda policy. We
saw AFSCME signs everywhere – a symbol of interest group and identity
politics. It looked old and it was old. It looked like the past and it
looked like business as usual – it did not look like change.

Within minutes I was listening to a breathtaking, pitch-perfect
speech – a fine mix of inspiring oratory and programmatic thinking. Watch it below. I
was looking at a beautiful family and picturing them in the White
House. I felt better about my country than I had felt in a very long
time.

I generally react badly to being manhandled, but when two Secret
Service agents suddenly frisked me from behind, I actually smiled and
thanked them before I leaned forward, shook Michelle and Obama’s hands and exchanged
a few words of congratulations. I looked at the Jamkid who was all eyes and realized that I had been exactly his age when a Palestinian with a pistol murdered my first political hero not far from my house at a rally just like this one. Bobby Kennedy was celebrating his victory in the California primary.

January 3 was an amazing day to be in Des Moines. A black guy who
not long ago was a complete unknown had just crushed Hillary Clinton
and John Edwards in the Iowa caucuses. He had just given a remarkable,
memorable speech to the nation and to New Hampshire, where he was bound
with an outstanding, well-financed, and battle-tested organization. In
American politics it simply does not get any better than this – and I
was enjoying it with my 15 year old son, who had quickly become both
conversant and very engaged in a few days of meetings with Presidential
candidates..

Obama could blow it. But as of now, he has his
opponents in a box and the Clinton and Edwards campaigns both know it. They do
not have an answer to Barack Obama – and they are not going to find a
lot of Democrats who want to stop this guy.

Hillary, a talented woman, has earned her positives as well as her nontrivial negatives, now
either holds on to win New Hampshire and delivers “comeback kid — the sequel” or she presides over the collapse of one of the
mightiest political legacies in America.

I don’t think she can pull it
off – and as much as I respect her talents, a large part of me doesn’t
want her to. The nomination and the election, which so recently was
Hilary Clinton’s to lose, is slipping rapidly from her grasp.

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Click here for a narrated photo album of the trip.

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At Thanksgiving over turkey I realized that the 2008 Iowa caucuses were going to be such an incredible political showdown that I had to go out and see it for myself.

Both parties are hosting their most open Presidential primaries in memory — no incumbents are running from either party. Both have surfaced strong fields with odd and colorful candidates. In both parties, candidates have emerged from single digit oblivion to at least momentary seriousness. Front runners in both parties have faltered: Romney to the improbable Mike Huckabee, Clinton and Edwards to Barack Obama. This street fight was going to be intense and best seen up close.

The caucuses conveniently end before school starts up again so I pitched the JamKid, who at 15 is old enough and smart enough to care a bit about these things. We bought cheap tickets to Kansas City, rented an SUV, and headed north through ice and snow to Iowa. A few hours later, we joined Barack Obama in a junior high gym in Des Moines.

We have now spent two days and three evenings in Iowa and we have
seen every major candidate up close. The JamKid has signatures on a
copy of the US Constitution from Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Mitt
Romney, and Chris Dodd. He has spoken to Bill and Chelsea Clinton,
Hillary, Huckabee, and Romney. We have seen candidates in small
restaurants, a town library, a frigid airport hanger, college lecture
halls, a swanky country club, campaign headquarters, and a supporter’s
house.

I am sure that other people thought of doing this, although I have not met any. Perhaps others knew just how cold it gets. At
a Romney event, I left my latte in the car figuring it might offend
Mormon sensibilities and found it frozen solid 90 minutes later (Romney
could have cared less. When a woman having
her picture taken with him suddenly realized she had a drink in her
had, he reassured her "it’s not illegal for you — just for me" — and
when he signed the JamKid’s constitution he took pains to avoid signing the 18th amendment).
That evening the thermometer hit 5 degrees and we attended an event
with Bill Clinton in Knoxville that was held in an unheated shed in the
corner of the local air field. Medics brought blankets for sobbing
children, but nobody left early.

Iowa is a small state with fewer than 3 million people living in
2,000 towns, 1700 precincts, and 99 counties served by 60 Wal Marts. It
holds a caucus not a primary. When you show up to a Democratic caucus,
you assemble with those who support your candidate or you stand with
undecided voters. There is a fair
amount of jousting to urge attendees to affiliate
or defect. At some point a count is made and those candidates that do
not have 15% of total attendees are declared not viable and disbanded.
Attendees may then re-affiliate with viable candidates. Once only viable candidates remain, the precinct allocates delegates and reports its totals. After nearly a year of campaigning, this becomes the first test of a Presidential candidate’s viability.

Democrats
and Republicans have fielded credible candidates this year in
Iowa. It seems likely that Democrat Iowans will tomorrow end the White
House dreams of three Senators and a Governor: Senators Joe Biden,
Chris Dodd, and (former Senator) John Edwards and Governor Bill
Richardson. These are exceptionally serious people who have moved their
families to Iowa, raised millions of dollars, opened dozens of offices,
and campaigned very hard for months. Their campaigns end tomorrow because a few Iowans will say so.

That 200,000 activists (perhaps 15% of Iowa’s registered voters) are able to thin the Presidential herd is of course, outrageous and undemocratic. I would end the practice tomorrow — and we would in many ways be poorer if I did.

The paradox noted by everyone who has been here is that the Iowa caucuses may not be democratic, but they serve a valuable purpose.
They force candidates to work in very small towns and in very intimate
small settings. Candidates need to make themselves available to
discussion and challenge with the same people repeatedly over a period
of many months. Raising money and running ads won’t get it done — this is pure retail politics.
You build supporters one at a time, you recruit and motivate a field
organization, you track activist supporters and hang on to them despite
highly competitive campaigning, and you get them to turn out for you on
election day. It is extraordinarily demanding work – candidates do 5-6 events each day and many visit all 99 counties in a state that to a Californian looks downright empty.

The Iowa Caucuses are always intense — but nothing like 2008. Four
years ago John Kerry reportedly had 20 paid staffers in Iowa. At the
moment, Hillary and Obama are each reported to have more than 400.
CNN reports that more than 5,000 people are volunteering to drive Clinton delegates to the polls. Mitt Romney has spent $17 million of his own money here plus that much
again from donors. Money is not the main determinant of success because media plays a relatively small role (indeed press
coverage of candidate media has been more important than the media
itself). The campaign is cacophonous and unrelenting; activists love it
but ordinary mortals are begging for relief.

What have I learned? My take goes something like this:

• We are sending some talented guys home. Richardson,
  Biden, and Dodd will finish tomorrow in that order and should.
  Richardson is serious VP material, Biden would be a fine Secretary of
  State, and Dodd was probably meant to be an outstanding US Senator. Any of these guys would have been a better nominee than John Kerry and any of them would have beat George Bush, so from one perspective the average level in the race is going up.

Biden’s
campaign seemed disorganized (lousy advance and event staff: the audio
didn’t work, but it didn’t matter since few people showed up anyway.
His staff did not sign people in and even the rock music was tepid).
Biden himself is brevity-challenged, but many of us with Irish DNA know
the problem.  He made wonderful use of his family, including his 90
year old mom and an older brother who did not hesitate to shout out
"thank you, Senator" when the answers had gone on too long. Biden is a chronic name-dropper, which
is probably an occupational hazard if you chair Foreign Affairs, but
having the cell phones of world leaders is really less important than
having something to say to them.

We did not see Richardson — could not make the maps overlap. Chris Dodd is the second finest Senator from Connecticut
but was frankly out of his league. His staff were pitiful (would not
walk two doors down to invite Japan’s leading TV network to the event)
and the campaign theme music was lame (if you want Van Morrison, go
with You’ll Come Running to Me, not Wild Night is Calling. We also know that it’s a John Mellencamp
song and that he is headlining for Edwards tonight. Sheesh.)

Dodd is a great guy, carries a nontrivial Firefighters endorsement,
filibustered a couple weeks ago to prevent the telcos from being
indemnified for releasing phone records — but is not someone with a differentiated message or a unique ability to deliver it. His
candidacy is DOA and it is fine with me if Iowa breaks him the news. He
moved his wife and young kids to Iowa and has been living on a bus for
months, so he can return home knowing that he gave it a good try.

• Barack Obama has a real shot at the Presidency.
  I arrived thinking that this was incredibly exciting and I leave
  thinking it as well. But Bill Clinton is right, even if he is in no
  position to say so: Obama is a roll of the dice.
  Barack has never experienced the full Republican attack machine
  (Hillary says she is the only one who can claim that. I beg to differ:
  ask John McCain).

Obama
is Harvard Law smart and he has the evangelist’s gift of pulling hope
out of a crowd’s soul, holding it up as his own deepest aspiration, and
catalyzing people to action. His style is serious; he is alternately professor and preacher. He is an orator — and most politicians are not. That’s the exciting part.

He appears very well organized from his field team to his website.
His venues are well-chosen and packed. His volunteers are meticulous
about getting people to sign commitment cards, which are the currency
of these events (the cards of course, get you in a caucus database and
ensure that your phone will not stop ringing with earnest reminders of
the blessed event). Obama’s events are well staged. The audio works,
the rock music is loud and well chosen (OK, in a race against Hillary, I would have added "Devil with a Blue Dress On" to the play list to see if anyone got the joke, but they didn’t ask me).

I like Obama, as any reader of this blog knows. I have also surfaced
concerns about his tactical mistakes and about screwups and missed
opportunities here, here and here.

I leave Iowa however, with grave reservations about his
understanding of national security issues and his ability and
willingness to lead an intelligent fight against militant Islamic
jihad. Democrats need to recognize that this is a huge issue, even if George Bush thinks so too.

At at time when the US military is gaining enormous ground on al
Qaeda in Iraq, I’d like to hear Obama say "We will fight al Qaeda and
their cronies anywhere and in any country — either with our allies or
without them. Furthermore, I will do my level best to find and kill
Osama Bin Laden". Otherwise, this is a very odd time to be electing a national security novice with dovish instincts.

• Hilary Clinton is a much better political leader than I gave her credit for. She knows how things get done in government and strikes me as easily the best prepared
  candidate. Her personal biography, separate from her husband’s, is
  impressive, as is the passion of people who know her well. In a race
  featuring six US senators, ten senators have endorsed Hillary; no other
  Senator has the support of more than two (Senators do not endorse
  quickly or easily, especially in primaries).  I remain deeply
  ambiguous about the Clinton legacy and hostile to the notion of
  Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. But she is far more knowledgeable,
  practical, and trustworthy on national security, she has a highly
  practical energy agenda, and I’d bet she gets health care right this time, even
  if her personal hubris was a larger factor last time than either she or
  her husband publicly acknowledge. She would be an immeasurably stronger
  candidate than John Kerry or Al Gore. Pity she is a Clinton (although
  Bill is doing a phenomenal job campaigning for her in Iowa. It was for
  him that we braved three hours on a bitter cold airfield).

• John Edwards is a useful menace. Edwards is the macho populist in the race. He gives a very passionate, effective stump speech promising to rip into big corporations and
  assuring his listeners that "you cannot ‘nice’ these guys into
  submission". There is truth to this — but a guy who wants to
  stand his ground instead of finding common ground will get nothing done. For this reason, Obama and probably Clinton are gonna crush him. Credit Edwards with making poverty a campaign issue — even if a multi-millionaire hedge fund advisor is not the ideal messenger. In his soul, John Edwards looks to me like a trial lawyer who loves to fight for the little guy against the big guys. There is a place for trial
  lawyers like that (although I wish they would support Republicans, not
  just Democrats) and John Edwards should become one of them again. Edwards needs a strong showing in Iowa or he is finished.

• Mitt Romney is a great man who has is turning out to be a terrible candidate. I
  was never highly likely to support Romney, but he came to the campaign
  with huge assets: an attractive family, including a father who was
  also a famous CEO and also a Republican governor of a blue state. Mitt
  had turned around Bain and the Salt Lake City Olympics — a stunning story. He
  has earned the fierce loyalty of
  his people and repaid it many times. As a Republican, he brought universal health
  care to Massachusetts! He never needed more than that to run on
  competence, competence, competence — which in today’s Republican Party
  is differentiation enough.

Instead, Mitt has flipped, trimmed, and pandered. He tacked hard right on social issues to try to win social conservatives. He altered longstanding positions on abortion, immigration, and gun control in order to play hard for the right wing vote of a right wing Iowa party. Voters smelled a rat. They knew that this is s not who Mitt Romney is and it’s not who George
Romney was. Conservatives who are evangelicals or social conservatives
looked around and spotted one of their own in Mike Huckabee — who, as
Bill Clinton points out with some pride, is an Arkansas good ol’ boy who
can tell a joke and a story — a skill that does not seem to
come easily to a Mormon from Michigan.

At a John McCain pre-caucus meeting tonight, I realized
why McCain spent today doing four events in New Hampshire before coming to
Iowa: Mike Huckabee is doing McCain’s job for him in Iowa. With
the evolution-denying Huckabee siphoning off Romney’s support, McCain
(who is dead in Iowa anyway because he opposes ethanol subsidies and
doesn’t think shipping 12 million illegals home is such a practical
idea) is free to work New Hampshire, where conservatives apparently
walk upright.   

• Mike Huckabee is a charming idiot who is helping McCain. He is a friendly fool who makes George Bush look like a genius. We
  joined his New Year’s Eve party at a Des Moines country club. The
  hairsprayed ladies, home-schoolers, and corn-fed gents in cheap ties were wrestling with a slight problem: their candidate had clearly lost his marbles that day.
  A few hours earlier Huckabee had held a press conference announcing
  that he was pulling off the air an ad he had spent the previous day
  shooting. When he announced this, the press literally broke out
  laughing at him. He then showed them the ads, which were, of course,
  posted on You-Tube within minutes. This from a guy whose response to
  the Bhutto assassination was to call for the sealing of the US border
  with Mexico. My former union, the Machinists, has endorsed the Huckster because they, like him, are an enchilada short of a combination plate. Huckabee will be revealed as a lightweight who can tell a joke, play bass guitar, and lose 75 lbs but not get nominated. If he is giving Romney trouble in Iowa — and he is — Romney has nobody to blame but himself. 

The Republicans could do worse than run John McCain. McCain
is arguably the toughest and greatest person running. He is usually
honest to a fault: on ethanol, on immigration, and on Iraq. Joe
Lieberman has endorsed him for President — and I take that fairly
seriously. But McCain is surrounding himself with religious ranters.
Tonight he was introduced first by an honorable group of veterans
including some who had been POWs with him. Then they trotted out Sam Brownback,
the Kansas senator who only recently ended his own presidential
ambitions. Brownback gave the standard right to life, overturn Roe v
Wade, and give us back our Supreme Court pitch to an entirely
uninterested audience. He clearly should have endorsed Huckabee and
wandered Iowa preaching to those who have already suffered from a bit
too much preaching. If McCain comes in third in Iowa and wins in New Hampshire, as seems possible tonight, he is in the game for real.

—————————————————————————————

Click here for a narrated photo album of the trip.

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I am presently on my first return visit to China in almost 32 years. Entries tagged "Return to China" are reflections on my earlier visit and thoughts about the extraordinary changes that I see today.

Here are links to the complete postings.

1. The Finger Factory

2. The New Mandarins: Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist

3. Soldiers and Soap Operas: Notes on moving around in China

4. Party On: The Evolution of Government in China

5. The Ashtray of History

6. Walling and Ducking

 

Several important caveats. First, I eat Chinese with enthusiasm but I speak no Chinese at all. Second, I have

visited mainly cities and China is still predominantly rural. Third, I am American down to my DNA, which means that I very often misinterpret what goes on here. I Americanize my observations about China just as Chinese occidentalize their views about America. Finally, China defies description and in many respects defies exaggeration. It is not a single place or a single social experiment, so it is not only me who runs the risk of drawing conclusions based on far too little data. The Chinese themselves run this risk – as the most thoughtful among them readily acknowledge. Nobody really understands this place, although at least a billion people understand it better than I do.

I will try to post a series of focused personal reflections of moderate length. I will post quickly, edit posts after they appear, and add photos as I am able.

Background

My social consciousness was forged, as the Maoists might have said, by the Three Great Struggles: the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-(Vietnam) war movement, and the women’s movement. By the mid seventies many twenty and thirty somethings were disillusioned with progress in America and intrigued by what we saw in China – a poor country that had seized its own destiny away from the US and appeared to be making impressive strides in providing health care, education, and opportunity to its citizens.

Our ideals were naive – which is pretty much what made them ideals. Much like the young people who turned a blind eye to the gulag during visits to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and returned home singing the praises of the New Soviet Man, we turned out to be naive about China, about Communism, and about the nature of economic and social progress.

In part, this was due to the badly slanted nature of contemporary writing about China. Writers like Norman Bethune (Away With All Pests), William Hinton (Fangshen and Shenfan), and Han Suyin (A Many Splendored Thing and a number of others) were, like their hero Edgar Snow, writing detailed books on the glorious achievements of Maoism that turned out to be nothing more than a rehash of CCP propaganda. You will search very hard among any of these writers to find a hint of thinking not in line with Mao’s personal views – which changed periodically, thus requiring especially adept writing. Even the lions of serious western Chinese scholarship, John Fairbank, Roderick MacFarquhar, Stuart Schram, Orville Schell and others often got it wrong despite a deep knowledge of Chinese history, language and literature. There was simply very little information coming out of the Middle Kingdom in those years.

Like North Korea today, China was an isolated garrison state — although its leaders did not sport the oddball hairdos. Visits were very restricted, closely managed, and granted only to those with a local sponsor and a reason for a visit. I was able to see Mao’s work first-hand thanks to the work of one of his fellows in patriotic homicide, Norodom Sihanouk. Sihanouk was the former Crown Prince of Cambodia and the descendant of two lines of Cambodian kings. He had been overthrown in a 1970 coup led by one of his lieutenants, probably with the help of the CIA. He was beloved by the Cambodian people an easily the most popular political leader in the country.

Unlike Mao, Sihanouk loved all things western. He had a taste for fine French dining, American jazz, beautiful women, and the high life of western cities. When we met with him in China, an an exceedingly poor and in many places starving nation, he received us at his home in Beijing (address: Norodom Sihanouk, Mussolini’s Son’s Mansion, Beijing, China – you can’t make this stuff up). I recall counting twelve pieces of silverware at each setting, five wine glasses, and seven courses of elegant French cuisine. — a level of sumptuousness that I have yet to exceed despite three decades of trying. The food proceeded from subtle broths to a terrine of something no doubt wasted on my young palette. The wines went from Dom Perignon to lovely French whites and rich reds. After desert and coffee, the Prince entertained us with his clarinet, signed copies of "My War with the CIA" for us, and showed us his radio room, where he bragged of his ability to communicate with the guerrilla group he had endorsed. He called them the Khmer Rouge — the first time any of us had heard the term. It turns out that Sihanouk’s endorsement was the key to their rise to power — and imprisoned in exquisite exile, the King appeared to have no idea what a monster he had unleashed.

The Khmer Rouge took their cue from Mao.They emptied Cambodia’s cities, subjected "intellectuals" (defined as anyone with more than a grade school education) to torture and death, usually with their families. Sihanouk learned of the true nature of the Khmer Rouge the hard way — they slaughtered his children while he played clarinet in Beijing. The Khmer Rouge carried out their own Cultural Revolution, killing one in five Cambodians and nearly allowing Vietnam to annex the country. Many of my professors, free to think critically thanks to a grant of lifetime tenure by the state, concluded that the whole thing terrific because it was revolutionary and anti-imperialist. Although In the years that followed our visit, 1.7 million Cambodians their lives, at the time none dared call it genocide.

It was Sihanouk who got us visas thanks to his personal physician, a Frenchman named Bernard Pate. Pate gave the visas to his son, who ended up working with my school to set up the trip. It fell to me to fly to Washington to obtain visas. I had to submit passports to the Chinese "interest office", since there was no consulate. It was Tom Clancy stuff ("stand at the phone booth across the street on Massachusetts Avenue at 1pm. The phone will ring and tell you which door to approach"). Again, think North Korea.

So we spent several months preparing to travel. We were: a mix of students – some Chinese-American, mostly white. One or two were campus Maoists, most of us were kindly disposed before the trip. Among the faculty, only one – a grumpy Russian – had the requisite skepticism. We thought him hopelessly jaded — until we returned, when he suddenly seemed much wiser. The group of visitors returned with a far more diverse view of China than when we left but all of us were deeply affected by the experience. It was one of those touchstone events that changed forever how we looked at the world.

Continue Return to China after 32 Years: Part 1. The Finger Factory

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A Daily Diary of the Alibris 2004 Road Show

American stock markets have replaced commercial banks as our most important source of corporate financial capital. Today about 15,000 companies worth trillions of dollars sell shares to the public. Public companies come under the scrutiny of the Securities Exchange Commission, whose first Chairman, Joseph Kennedy, Sr., knew a thing or two about the manipulation of public capital markets.

A company that wishes to raise capital by selling its shares to the public undertakes a highly formalized ritual known as an initial public offering, or IPO. For a fast growing technology company, an IPO is a coming out party worthy of a Texas debutante. For a CEO, an IPO is a right of passage.

Two years ago, I attempted to take a small company public shortly before the Google IPO, one of the largest and most visible public offerings ever.

Our offering failed – a humiliation at the time, although it turned out not to be such a bad thing. The reasons for the failure are partly fundamental (Alibris was too small to be a public company), partly technical (our lawyers and bankers made some boneheaded decisions), and partly financial (thanks to optimistic and generous private investors, we ended up not needing to accept pricing that we did not like). As with most public failures however, almost nobody remembers the reason or even really cares.

Preparing an IPO takes several months. Attorneys, investment bankers, and accountants prepare detailed documents for government review. The collective billing rate for these rooms full of nice suits frequently exceeded $10,000 per hour (excluding the bankers, who get paid more, but only if and when the deal closes). Our company, which sells used, rare, out of print books to consumers and businesses via the Internet had rather less than $10,000 per hour in revenue – and no earnings to speak of. The documents that emerge from these meetings give the public a remarkably complete, if turgid, picture of the company, its markets, people, and financial condition.

To go public, a company puts on its Sunday finest. Boards quickly adopt policies worthy of grown ups: how do we protect whistleblowers? What is our code of ethics? (Bring on more lawyers, since "No cheating" will no longer suffice). Should we reincorporate in Delaware, whose courts are apparently a wholly owned subsidiary of the stock exchange? (Easy decision. Yes).

The documents are reviewed and approved by the SEC, whose attorneys are not fools. They assume that anyone raising public capital is trying to shill an impoverished widow out of her last dollar. In truth, we will be attempting to shill large investment funds out of a tiny fraction of their dollars — but the disclosure requirements are the same.

Once the draft prospectus, or "Red Herring" is approved, the road show begins. The CEO, the CFO and the investment bankers visit prospective investors. The road show is an intense, surreal journey of over-scheduled days that resembles nothing so much as a politician’s whistle stop election campaign. The purpose of the campaign is money – for a company and eventually for investors.

Our road show took place in early May, 2004. Each evening, I emailed home notes to our board and employees. I am publishing each entry on its two year anniversary because to have published them at the time would have violated the strict SEC "quiet period" prohibitions on any communication that had not been cleared by regulators. I have updated the diaries slightly and redacted most names. Doing this eliminated all reference to my bankers, lawyers, and colleagues – especially Steve Gillan, our CFO, and Brian Elliott, then our COO. This is fair, insofar as they in no way endorsed my musings, but it gives the incorrect impression that this IPO was a solo effort. It was not. I happily acknowledge and appreciate their huge contribution to this effort – although errors in these notes are mine alone.

Although blogs traditionally present most recent entries first, these are best read chronologically. .

Diary in chronological order — as it happened:

Day One: London

Day Two: San Francisco: Stretchin’

Day Three: La Jolla: Flush Until Water Runs Clear

Day Four: Denver: Momentum a Mile High

Day Five: Milwaukee: How High is Up?

Day Six: Boston: You Must Be Salesmen 

Day Seven: Philadelphia: Whistle Stop

Day Eight and Nine: New York: Early Returns

Technorati : Alibris, IPO, IPO Diaries

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