WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

Iowa, like America, is a land of myths. It is the bridges of Madison County. It is the reason Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama became president. It is where Donna Reed and John Wayne were born, where a future Starfleet captain named James T. Kirk will be raised, in the year 2228, six weeks after the Iowa caucuses (if we still have them in the 23rd century). Iowa is where you can play catch at twilight with the ghost of your father on a baseball diamond you built, inadvisably, because a voice in your head told you to . ...

Iowa loves to feel, to talk, to listen, to prod. Iowa wants to see the barbecue sauce on a candidate’s rolled-up sleeves, the run in her stockings. Iowa wants to judge a candidate’s handshake, glimpse her treatment of staff, nab him in moments of fakery.

Iowans shift their schedules to encounter candidates in fleshy 3D, away from the terse theatrics of billboards and cable-news hits . ... They show up to town halls on dark nights, as the sky spews sleet, so they can ask Pete Buttigieg about the price of insulin, because they have friends or patients who can’t afford it.

They let candidate John Delaney buy them dinner so they can ask about issues beyond their white, rural world: the crisis at the border, the mass incarceration of black men. They volunteer for positions of leadership, even if they’ve never thought of themselves as leaders.

Dan Zak, The Washington Post