Say a Prayer for the Contender

As Jackson Browne once pronounced in his song "The Pretender"-- "Between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender," politicians scurrying through Iowa are in a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation with the jaded grassroot voters.

As CNN points out, "Even in the age of Internet campaign announcements, Web chats and virtual primaries, Iowa voters still expect opportunities to rub elbows with all the candidates before next January's caucus."

"Everybody wants to see each candidate, everybody wants to personally talk to each candidate. That's been a tradition in Iowa," said Lee County Democratic Party Chairman Rick Larkin, who came out to eat and mingle with other activists and listen to Clinton.

"You circle around, you kick the tires, look each candidate over and then you make your decision."

"Somebody will come out of Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire with an awful lot of momentum," John Edwards said. "I think it's going to be difficult to win the nomination if you don't do well in the early states."

"But doing well in those states also will cost this cycle's presidential candidates more than ever before -- as evidenced by the record-setting fundraising totals in the first quarter."

"But some Iowa activists fear the race for cash could force candidates to stay out of their state."

"With the primaries being frontloaded, it turns into more of a media event after Iowa," said Larkin, the Lee County Democratic Party chairman. "They may not have as much time to spend in Iowa because they got to be out raising money to make sure they got enough to go on after Iowa."

Publicly funded elections would go a long way to allowing the candidate's message being about who they are, what their plans for the presidency are--in other words keeping politics on the retail level "where the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender" and not turning politicians into commodities to be brokered by a relative few whose agenda is far different than the average Iowa voter.

Until we seriously push for only publicly-financed elections, "Say a prayer for the pretender who started out so young and strong only to surrender."