LITTWIN: Never been a race like this-so many have a chance to win

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 3, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

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Photo by Chris Schneider Photos / The Rocky

Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, speaks to voters at the Veteran's Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

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Tonight you can expect to see the strangest thing yet in this presidential race.

It will be stranger even than the two camels - yes, camels - being led down Locust Street in downtown Des Moines the other night. I don't know where they were going. I don't even know what metaphor to try for. I just know it was two camels - and, in this post-Christmas season, I didn't see a single wise man anywhere near them. I did, however, later bump into a couple of well-paid political consultants.

In any case, the strange thing tonight is that people, at long last, will actually vote. OK, it's not a perfect vote. It's a caucus, which is not exactly the most democratic way to run a democracy. It's not even in the top three. (Note: They're expecting a record 300,000 to caucus. That means 1.7 million eligible Iowa voters will not.)

But, hey, it is a vote. Not a poll. And not a push poll. And not a couple of desert animals; I wonder, can you see a mirage in Iowa, walking the snowy Midwest streets?

It's the day when there will be actual winners and losers and actual well-paid consultants explaining how a third-place finish is not really a third-place finish.

There was a nightmare piece in The New York Times the other day about how it may all be for nothing. After all the TV ads and all the thousands of calls made and all the millions of dollars spent, it's possible that the only bounce here will be from any would-be caucus-goers slipping on the ice.

Here's a scenario. Mike Huckabee, the poll leader, wins the Republican caucuses, but doesn't have the money or time to establish a national campaign. And the win means only that Mitt Romney will have spent at least $17 million of his own money and couldn't beat the pastor from Hope, Ark. And then Romney would face an underfunded but surging John McCain in New Hampshire, leading to the question: Doesn't money count for anything anymore?

And on the Democratic side, let's say John Edwards wins. And - stop me if you've heard this - he doesn't have the money or time to establish a national campaign. Or, there's this: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Edwards finish something like 28-27-26, and nobody really wins. And the three head to New Hampshire, where the voters go to the polls next Tuesday, and maybe something gets settled. Or not.

Here's what we do know: There has never been a race like this one. There are five Republicans who conceivably could win the nomination, if you insist on counting Fred Thompson. Here's the maximum chaos theory: Huckabee wins here, McCain in New Hampshire, Romney in Michigan, Thompson in South Carolina and Rudy Giuliani in Florida. Then there's Tsunami Tuesday on Feb. 5, when everything could be straightened out. Or not.

And the polls suggest the Democrats, meanwhile, have three possible winners, but even more with a chance to make history. Clinton would be the first woman nominee, Obama the first African-American, Edwards the first (apparently) son of a millworker. But there are also the longer shots. Bill Richardson would be the first Hispanic. Dennis Kucinich would be the first ex-Cleveland mayor who's seen a UFO and who is both a head shorter and 30 years older than his wife.

What I mean is, camels could be the least of it. Here's the last-second rundown of the five leading candidates:

* Clinton: I've come here to Indianola to see Clinton's closing speech. She is, shall we say, going for the calmly reassuring tone. In a 55-minute talk, that risks translation as calmly dull. But she is, she tells us, ready from "day one" and she's also a "change" candidate, although not necessarily a change from the Bush-Clinton-Bush dynamic. Speaking of which, Chelsea Clinton was here with her mom. Bill Clinton was somewhere else in the state, telling people that it's a "roll of the dice" to vote for Obama.

* Obama: He has the lead in the latest Des Moines Register poll, which got it exactly right - Kerry, Edwards, Dean, in that order - in 2004. Obama uses this quote in his closing speech: "The same old experience is irrelevant. You can have the right kind of experience or the wrong kind of experience. And mine is rooted in the real lives of real people, and it will bring real results if we have the courage to change." The quote, he says, is courtesy of Bill Clinton's run in 1992.

* Edwards: As I write this, Edwards was on a 36-hour bus tour, making something like 12 stops. The last time that sounded like a good idea to me, I was in college and had been up myself for 72 hours. The tour was to end with a rally in Des Moines headlined by John Mellencamp. Don't look for these lyrics, though: "Cuz they told me when I was younger/Boy, you're gonna be president/But just like everything else those old crazy dreams/Just kinda came and went."

* Romney: When he was asked how much money he had contributed to his campaign in the last quarter, he said he didn't know. It reminded me of the old line: If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it. Romney can afford it. What he is less able to afford is a loss in Iowa, where he was supposed to be a lock. That's why McCain, Giuliani and Thompson barely competed here. I guess it was one more thing Huckabee didn't understand.

* Huckabee: He's on his own, uh, road trip. He left Iowa Wednesday to fly to L.A. to appear on the Tonight Show in Jay Leno's return. One thing, because of the writers' strike, Huckabee had to cross a picket line. Two more things: Huckabee has publicly backed the writers, and - get this - he told reporters he didn't actually realize there was a picket line. He can be president, I guess, but maybe not secretary of labor. Apparently, Huckabee confused Leno - who has not settled with his writers - with Letterman, who has settled. (And this just in: Hillary Clinton, who was not confused and who did not cross any lines, secretly taped Letterman's introduction from Iowa. Show biz, huh?)

Meanwhile, The Washington Post had this from Ed Rollins, the crusty operative who signed on with Huckabee just in time to make the negative Romney ad that never aired. "What I have to do," Rollins said, "is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn't get in the way of my thought process." Celebrity watch: You can expect to see plenty of No. 1 Huckabee fan Chuck Norris, who, just guessing, also would like to knock someone's teeth out. You know, it just might be a fun night.

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com

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