A Year in Iowa

Obama's audience gets some satisfaction

April 22, 2007

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- "This is April, but it was very powerful."

So said 60-year-old Gary Sanders of Iowa City about Barack Omama's Earth Day speech on the grounds of the University of Iowa's Pentacrest. And Sanders says he's "neutral, non-committed'' when it comes to the field of presidential candidates. He didn't sound too neutral after the event that he and about 5,000 others attended on an idyllic spring day.

"I was actually surprised at my reaction to him,'' said Sanders, an activist for local labor. "Because up until now, I've thought he was more 'rock star,' to be honest.

"He was fabulous. Very, very energized. A really incredible speaker, incredible heart. He spoke to people, he connected with people. He really did. ... He has that potential -- potential -- to be the first candidate since Bobby Kennedy who can speak to black and white, workers and professionals, people across the spectrum who want to turn the page, who just feel that enough's enough.''

Sanders wasn't the only member of his age group here by any means, but this was a young crowd on a college campus in what probably is the most liberal city in Iowa. Obama's insistence that the U.S. must remove its troops from Iraq, that teachers should be paid and valued more in this country, that the American health care system is broken -- these were things that would play to this particular crowd were they to come from any candidate.

But would any other candidate attract 5,000 people here on a Sunday afternoon in April when Iowans wait several months for a Sunday afternoon in April like this one? It was warm, sunny, breezy, perfect.

This "rock star" thing gets beaten to death, but it seemed more than fitting as virtually everyone on the Pentacrest lawn stood to get a glimpse of Obama and click an image of him on their picture-phones as he worked his way to the stage. U2's soaring "City of Blinding Lights'' blared from amply-sized amplifiers, booming off the Old Capitol and other buildings on the grounds.

Bono and Barack.

The song opens with:

The more you see the less you know
The more you find out as you go
I knew much more then than I do now

Voters would probably hope the second line is to be taken more literally than the first or third when applied to their candidates.

But these songs aren't chosen haphazardly. Amid popular modern-day rock anthems played here before Obama arrived (his campaign is big on U2 songs), the Rolling Stones' Vietnam-era classic "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'' was included. That seemed a better fit for some in the crowd, like 29-year-old Kristi Lohmeier of Iowa City, who works for the non-profit, non-partisan Iowa Policy Project.

"I watched (Obama) speak yesterday in Des Moines,'' Lohmeier said. "I met him. I looked him in the eyes. I have a brother that's on his third deployment right now with the Army and I just looked him in the eyes and said 'Bring my brother home, please, bring him home." If I were to say that to George Bush, I think he would say nothing. He would be totally blank. I could see in Barack's eyes that he felt my fears about my brother being deployed."

But the passionate were intertwined with the merely curious. Some were there because it was the place in Iowa City to be for an hour, to see a celebrity, and move on. Others staked out their viewing positions long before the event started. But like the crowd of 2,200 that packed Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids to see Obama over two months ago, virtually all in attendance seemed to listen attentively. Like 19-year-old Erica Clausen of Portland, Ore., a goalkeeper for the university's women's soccer team. She also attended a speech former President Jimmy Carter gave in the University of Iowa's Carver-Hawkeye Arena last Wednesday night.

"I haven't decided who I want,'' Clausen said. "(Obama) went up a few notches in my book. Some people said he wasn't very strong at public speaking, but I definitely thought he was pretty strong at it.

"I feel like everyone's kind of up in the air right now.''

I worked at the University of Iowa's student newspaper in 1980. Carter easily outpolled Ronald Reagan for president in Iowa City and Johnson County voting. On that Election Night, some of my co-workers seemed stunned when they learned the nation hadn't fallen in line.

"You can't lull yourselves and delude yourselves into thinking the crowd here is a microcosm of voters in America,'' Sanders said. "What we saw here today was yonger, more middle class and upper middle class, people not committed to power structures, more highly educated.''

But when Democratic flavor-of-that-moment presidential candidate Howard Dean campaigned in Iowa City's City Park on Labor Day, 2003, the gathering was a few hundred. Sunday, over four months further from January's Iowa caucuses than that day four years ago, a campaign appearance was the focal point of this campus and city for a day.

"The amount of people that are here today, to me, is incredible,'' Lohmeier said. "It's very exciting. I relate this feeling I have now to what people must have felt when JFK was president. It's really somebody that cares. I've never felt that way about George Bush. I really didn't feel that way about (Bill) Clinton, honestly. But I think Barack has an energy around him and he comes from a genuine place. He comes from a grass roots background.

"For a lot of people the last eight years that have been working at a grassroots level trying to make a difference and just get beaten down and beaten down, Barack stands for something that they can actually put themselves behind and win. It's just a great feeling.''

It was, in the words of U2 and many here, a beautiful day. "Flawless,'' said a young Obama campaign volunteer.

It also was Iowa City.