American democracy often seems like a massive, manufactured and manipulated affair. It will not feel so in Iowa tomorrow evening. This otherwise small and isolated state has been at the centre of international attention. The caucuses are, in a sense, ludicrously disproportionate in influence. In approximately 1,750 meeting halls, citizens will gather not simply to cast a vote and return home but to participate in a formal event lasting some time in which the relative merits of the candidates will be assessed and decided. As a result, turnout will be low but still desperately important. Iowa has about two million registered electors. If 250,000 take part in the caucuses, that will break all records.
That value will, though, be more relevant to the Democrats than to the Republicans. New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina will be the early battlefields for Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson. If any of these men were to come even second in the Iowa skirmish this would represent the triumph of personal popularity over organisational effort.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, life will be different. Iowa is the place where the senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the former senator John Edwards start the race as virtual equals. Mrs Clinton has the resources to win what is basically a fight among the most active of Democrats. Mr Obama, by contrast, is well placed to mobilise the idealism of those who believe most passionately in the party. Mr Edwards did well in the Iowa caucus four years ago and has almost lived in the state since. He needs a victory here to soak up the publicity that such a win would bring and hopes to pull off an improbable triumph in New Hampshire that might spur him on to seize the nomination.
The best interests of not only the Democratic Party but the of wider world is that this does not happen. Four years ago, Mr Edwards was a fascinating possibility. Although he engaged in folksy “two Americas” rhetoric, he appeared to be casting himself as an electable Southern moderate in the manner of Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson. He was probably the senior Democrat best placed to torpedo George W. Bush's quest for a second term in the Oval Office. This time, alas, the smile remains the same but the teeth are sharper. He is the champion of palaeo-Democrats, flying the flag of a diminishing trade union movement, advocating protectionism in trade and with nothing of any notable merit to offer to foreign policy. He has made an epic dash from the future to the past without ever touching the present. Iowa should be his first and last stand.
It will not be for Mrs Clinton. She could finish a poor third tomorrow and still be nominated by a substantial majority. She has many virtues as a politician (several of which eluded her superficially more appealing husband). She is very bright but also works extremely hard and with admirable discipline. She has strong principles but as a senator has been an impressive pragmatist, reaching across party lines whenever she can to enact legislation. She has undoubted experience and has been compelled to be a realist. She is well versed in foreign affairs. And a woman president would be a welcome innovation. In theory, this should have been enough to allow her to sew up the nomination. That it has not is a tribute to the charms of her principal rival, Mr Obama.
At one level, he is an implausible candidate for the Oval Office. He is a mixed-race man in a country that, if its enemies' accounts were to be accepted, is riven with racism. He is an un-abashed liberal on most issues when logic suggests a more centrist inclination would be shrewder. There are many questions on which his views remain ambiguous. Above all else, he is almost painfully inexperienced, a feature that has occasionally been exposed in a fashion which has made him seem an innocent, notably in foreign policy. Against that, nonetheless, must be placed temperament, symbolism and immense potential. Even Mr Obama's foes concede that he is an exceptional man of rare determination yet inner peace. He is doing far better than past “black” candidates for the Oval Office because he has eschewed the politics of anger in favour of those of reconciliation. Many conservative Americans would not care for much of his agenda if he were elected but they would not feel that he was carrying through those policies out of a warped vengeance. He can legitimately claim to be a far less polarising politician than Mrs Clinton would be.
For this newspaper, as for many Americans, the head says Clinton but the heart hails Obama. In ordinary circumstances, the heart would be stroked sympathetically but the head would ultimately be deferred to for leadership. If the bookmakers and most calculating observers are correct, this will transpire and Mrs Clinton will be duly chosen.
But there is a strong and unsentimental argument for this to be the year of the heart. If the Democrats are to take back the White House — and history suggests that they will — they have to provide the United States and the world beyond with a nominee who is the personification of acceptable change. Anyone who is less than that could lose when compared with John McCain or possibly Rudy Giuliani. For all her robust qualities, Mrs Clinton's quest seems to be about moving back to the 1990s rather than moving on to something different. She is fighting another round in an American version of the War of the Roses. Dynasty runs the danger of crowding out fresh ideas. She seems to be about the restoration of the deposed rather than the renewal of a superpower. Her husband recently praised Mr Obama but gave a warning that selecting him constituted a “roll of the dice”. In 2008, Democrats would do best by breathing deeply and calmly deciding to roll the dice.
