On eve of Iowa caucuses, a look back to 2008

Now that the last Republican debate is in the can and we’re just over two weeks away from the Iowa caucuses, let’s recall what it was like the last time ’round — in 2008, when both Democrats and Republicans were slugging it out as the midwest froze.

That’s when I dispatched Brooklyn Paper Editor Gersh Kuntzman on a foreign adventure: To cover the caucuses in Brooklyn, Iowa, a town with a population [2000 Census] of 1,367 people, 582 households, and 349 families, located 20 miles east of Grinnell (population 9,000) and 55 miles from Iowa City (with 67,000 people — including around 25,000 University of Iowa students — we’re talking city!).

Gersh filed several reports, including this one:

He said what he saw in Brooklyn, Iowa, made him “proud to be an America.”

What I saw on Thursday night was the most basic form of American democracy in action. In small towns all across Iowa, people in numbers fewer than a brownstone block back in New York gathered in school gymnasiums and community centers to do something that all of us should probably do a bit more often: look their neighbors in the eye and talk to them about the issues that matter to them and the men or women they think will actually make a difference.

All too often, voting is not just a chore, but a bloodless one, allowing us the ability to not care for an entire four years, then walk into a private booth and pull whatever lever we want, whether we’re educated on the candidates’ positions or not.

But Iowans are the crash test dummies of American politics. For almost a year, they’re inundated with information, phone calls, propaganda, door knocks and speeches.

They’re doing it for us, you know.

Rather than tune out, Iowans actually listen to this stuff. They actually think about the issues. When Bill Clinton came to Brooklyn the other night, no one was impressed by his former status as the President of the United States. Few applauded or laughed at his jokes.

But everyone actually listened.

Gersh broke the news that the town’s Republican mayor (in whose home Gersh stayed) switched parties so he could vote for Obama; the editor of the Brooklyn, Iowa, Chronicle didn’t think that was a big deal. Then Gersh reported the final tally (Edwards won the largest number of Brooklyn hearts; Republicans went first for Huckabee).

But that was then. On Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012, caucus night in Iowa, it will be a whole new ball game.

Note that the caucus process the Democrats followed in ’08, and described by Gersh in the attached video, is different from the GOP’s system this year. Brooklyn, Iowa, photo by Gersh Kuntzman.

This post originally appeared on my sister blog, BrooklynToday.com.