I hate to be nasty, but anybody who takes the Ames Straw Poll results seriously is an idiot. A bunch of people spent ludicrous amounts of money to bus-and-truck 14,000 people to a big picnic, and the guy who spent the most bought the win with a mammoth 4516 votes. Goshers! 4,516 votes…

Look, I understand that the political press sent to Ames for the weekend needs to have something to write about. What they should be writing about is that this event is to the Republican presidential nomination as a clown car is to a Formula One racer.  – John Podhoretz, National Review’s The Corner

The heat is already starting to feel oppressive and it isn’t even 9:30.  Sweat beads on my forehead, covered by an NRA hat just thrown in my hands (along with gobs of other gun parafanalia) from a sturdy if small booth, and as I scan the horizon looking for other signs of activity.  Not more than 15 feet in front of me, speaking in the relative shade of his open air tent, Mike Huckabee addresses the early morning crowd.  Falling back and forth between jokes of desperation and bitter truth, even saying with half-seriousness that he hopes something happens to the bus loads of supporters for other more organized campaigns, Huckabee wraps up his speech, engages his backers in intimiate conservations and eventually takes the stage with his band, “Capitol Offense”, to try and fire up his faithful in advance of the 10:00 am voting start with electric guitar riffs.  Is this any way to pick a president?  Or should it be the way? 

Arriving in Ames, Iowa you realize how different the presidential campaign is for those who view the pursuit of the leadership of the free world in terms better suited for a County Commissioner or state representative.  Ames may relish in their retail (some might say, pandering) politics, poking fun at their own absurdity of candidates legally buying votes without prosecution, but one cannot escape the carnivale atmosphere of the Iowa State University campus – a combination of the Minnesota State Fair’s Midway, a national GOP convention and a neighborhood get-together all wrapped up in a (usually) pre-paid partisan bow.  But what makes Ames and Iowa the most unique is the complete reversal of the candidate/voter relationship.  Having fully experienced Iowa in caucus season, one cannot help but find the mystique of the presidency stripped faster than a Clinton intern.

For even the most veteran activist, meeting a presidential candidate beyond the fringe level, yet alone having them engage you in conservation and interest, is an almost unknown experience outside of the infinite corn rows of Iowa’s endless fertile plain.  While this cycle’s crop of candidates baking under a hot Saturday sun – and the scruntity of straw poll voters - were more pretenders than contenders, to be sought after by actual presidential candidates in forums better suited for a backyard candidate meet-n’-greet, shatters most of one’s remaining pre-conceived illusions of the presidential process.  And as I pondered such thoughts between meeting Newt Gingrich, J.C. Watts, Mike Huckabee and dodging Ron Paul volunteers angrily chanting “we’re not paid staffers” at Mitt Romney’s blue-shirted entourage, I wondered where this process of humanizing the presidency will end.

There is much to gain from forcing presidential contenders to grovel for votes like your city council member or state senator, as for many it will either be the first or last time in their political careers they will have to debase themselves to encounter the masses on semi-equal terms.  Without the pomp of the presidency guarding a media-managed impression of infallibility, hopefulls arrive as people before they exit, eventually, as two-dimensional figures.  Amid rock-climbing walls (two of them between the Romney and Brownback camps), mountains of free food and cheap nitnacks given away by candidates and various causes alike (I still have my red foam Romney “Mitt”), a different form of democracy emerges.  Whereas once distance and now the TV screen created the aura of the presidency (even when the men who inhabited the office failed to live up to image) Ames and Iowa strip the pretensions away to its most base form – a political candidate begging for your support.

I struggle to stay awake inside Hilton Coliseum as the candidate speeches go on.  At least a few candidates help my quest.  Tom Tancredo’s dull debate performances seem a thing of the past as the man known for his immigration stance makes a pithy but well received statement of his foreign policy proposal – “we win; you lose.”  Mike Huckabee’s message drifts like a leaf on a sea of disinterest but does so with such eloquence and passion he captures the attention of the stadium in addition to his 18% showing.  And poor John Cox (dubbed the “sane fringe candidate” by the Weekly Standard) nearly brings down the house with unintentional laughter with his introduction video, set to the tune of Led Zeppelin’s ”Immigrant” but with new, karaoke-texted lyrics complete with spellings such as “we weant.”  Watching the candidate demonstrations before and after each speech, reminiscent of the political conventions of old, and seeing the C-SPAN monitors in the media corral, I can only wonder what the images on the nightly news will be and how little of the day’s political intimacy will be seen by the thousands or millions who might, at best, catch a glimpse of the Ames straw poll coverage.

Is Ames important?  It depends on which Ames you’re referring to.  Is the Ames that brought Mitt Romney a win and may have jump-started Mike Huckabee’s campaign important in the big picture?  Probably only in the media’s eye.  But the Ames that empowers voters over candidates is important.  No one wants to see the general election become Ames – an election where candidates can literally buy victories.  Nor is Iowa’s (and New Hampshire’s) retail politics entirely the model to embrace everywhere and still keep some lingering shreds of the presidency’s air of mystical authority.  But it is a refreshing experience in many ways and one that every Republican should try at least once.  It’s a shame for Democrats that they don’t have a similar event.