Biden: 'It's just a strange process, man'
Aug. 22, 2006
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- On a late Tuesday summer afternoon in a bar somewhere near the middle of America, a man runs for president of the United States.
Joe Biden is amid pool tables, dart boards and beer signs in the back of the Union Station tavern off a busy street in Cedar Rapids, the second-largest city in Iowa. He is a six-term U.S. senator and the top Democrat on the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, trying to win the affection of about 30 attentive listeners.
They include three female senior citizens who giddily welcome kisses on the cheek from the senator. And, a man in bib overalls who, based on the seriousness in which he tells the senator what matters to him and concerns him after Biden's speech, clearly is nobody's stereotype.
When Biden addresses the entire gathering, his talk is far less formal than it would be in a lecture hall or in a television studio. He makes teasing references to people in the room. He quotes an Irish poet. He occasionally pauses to check a piece of paper with his notes. But it's a campaign speech all the same, delivered with force and passion, with the crescendos of someone who has given countless speeches throughout his adult life.
Sitting at the bar in the front half of the building, meanwhile, nine drinkers either are unaware or uncaring that Biden is in their presence. The lone apparent link between them and their fellow citizens elsewhere in the tavern is the only bar employee working at the time, a young female who clearly is earning her pay dashing back and forth to serve the two groups.
The Iowa presidential caucuses that often have a considerable effect on determining the two major parties' nominees are still a year and four months away from this moment. The presidential election? Two years and three months off. Yet, here is Biden in the middle of one of his four trips to the state in August alone, covering hundreds of miles by automobile to work crowds often similar in size to those one would find in a Cedar Rapids deli or dollar store.
It's the same thing so many other declared and undeclared candidates for president are doing and have been doing in 2006, and the process is barely started. In all of 2007 and the first few weeks of 2008, Iowans will share their state with a slew of candidates, their campaign workers, and media people from all over the U.S. and beyond.
This is how presidents get elected?
"It's kind of amazing, it really is,'' Biden says as he stands in the bar's parking lot after his hour and 15 minutes inside, squinting as he faces the sun before taking an 85-mile ride to Davenport for a political event there this night. He is so far from Washington, so far from anything resembling a media horde and national spotlight.
"They're small crowds,'' Biden continues. "But you only have 100,000 people who go to the caucus. Of those 100,000 people, you get one or two shots at each of them. So you better come across at the time. I'm not going to see a lot of these people again that were here. For all the time I can spend here between now and the caucus -- 17 months or something like that -- how many people am I going to see more than once when I'm here? Not many.''
While many around the nation question why Iowa gets such influence in helping determine presidential nominees, the candidates themselves usually say it's a very good thing. Most happen to be the same candidates who have spent and will spend a lot of time in the state. But it's inarguable that many Iowans enjoy getting up close and personal with presidential hopefuls, summing them up, and telling whatever they feel like telling them.
"Where in the hell else do I go in the next 17 months where I'll have as many serious national press people that come and listen?'' Biden poses. "I can go make a speech in New York or in California to 3,000 people -- not a single serious press person. Not a single one. You know what I mean? Nobody.
"I'm in -- wherever the hell I was with Dave (in Iowa with state Democratic U.S. Congress candidate David Loebsack) four or five days ago. You've got the guy from the Washington Post, you've got three or four national reporters. Yet I go make a speech in New York City to 1,800 lawyers, there isn't a press person in the room. I made a very serious speech.
"It's just a strange process, man. A strange process.''
Loebsack waits for Biden as the senator spends seven minutes in that parking lot addressing a total of three questions from this writer. This isn't an atypical day for Loebsack. John Edwards is among other Democratic big shots who have stumped for him, once in a downtown Cedar Rapids coffee shop over a lunch hour.
Biden, though here to support Loebsack, has made no bones about the fact that he's running for president. The hard part is gaining traction. If it is to happen for him, it will almost surely happen slowly, as it did for Jimmy Carter here over 30 years ago when he canvassed the state thoroughly in the two years leading up to the 1976 Iowa caucus. Carter received the most votes in the caucus, and went from being a presidential long shot to Gerald Ford's replacement.
Says Biden: "I think it's important at this stage -- for the only people who are going to show up are activists -- for them to draw the judgment that you are tough and smart. Resolved, tough and smart. I think that's what they're looking for. I think that's why Iowa's so important along with New Hampshire. If you can't make it through those two portals, you don't get very far.
"If you get blown out here, you don't exceed expectations, you get blown out in New Hampshire, it's over. It's done. Right, wrong, or indifferent, it's done.''
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