Iowa and the Cows

I have followed the GOP candidate vetting process closely since it began, and we now have the Iowa caucuses and very nearly have the New Hampshire primaries out of the way. It is fitting that the first caucuses in the nation for the GOP should be held in Iowa. It is fitting not because Iowa is a very grand state, or because it is packed with intelligentsia, because it boasts the largest cities in the nation, has the most political savvy, or makes the best cheese. It is none of those things.

Why, then, do I think it fitting? Why should the presidential candidate picking process begin in the somewhat insignificant state of Iowa?

My answer is because it is a state of farmers.

I have had the privilege of not only knowing and meeting many farmers in my lifetime, but to have called some of those farmers my extended family. I know farmers who raise goats, others that produce dairy products, still others that run "everything" farms. I used to live down the street from a farmer who grew his own feed corn and raised cattle, and the smell of manure was omnipresent on summer days.

All these farmers may have had different areas of expertise and different pursuits, but they shared some commonalities. The one I usually noticed first was strength. I wouldn't have dared arm wrestle any of them, even a farmer I know who is closing in on eighty years old, for fear of being made to look the fool. They are wiry, strong, and really really tough. Their arms are knotty and powerful, and their hands are rough with hard labor and honest work.

Another commonality I noticed was the way they talk. It seemed the truer the farmer (the closer to the land he was) the less talkative he got. Speech was slow and careful, sometimes awkward like a silent hermit allowed to speak after twenty years, but hardly uneloquent. It seemed the more in tune with nature and its rhythms they became, the less there was to say.

But I think the greatest similarity amongst all farmers I have spoken to is their sense of peace. They have all seemed more internally serene than people of other professions, as well as more accepting of problems and challenges. They tackle life with vigor and react to life with ease. Their solutions to issues may be makeshift and inelegant sometimes, but they work. Farmers plan well ahead, but do not worry about next month, only about the next day.

In a nutshell, every farmer I have ever met has been (no pun intended) grounded. They are solid, dependable, no-nonsense people who care little for intrigues and affairs. They want food to put on the table and a roof over their heads, and when they can scratch these things out of the ground they live on then they are happy.

What has this got to do with the GOP caucuses, you ask? Well, it is my firm belief that Iowa insists that it not be forgotten by politicians in Washington. Politicians would do well to shake more farmers' hands, and if they can be made to do so in order to win a party nomination so much the better.

I find it amusing that the "intelligentsia" of this country live on both coasts, but very few venture into middle America. I have heard middle America referred to as "flyover country", those big fields where food happens but that nobody cares about. It is because the ruling class of this country has by and large abandoned trying to understand what working the land is really like. Most politicians are not familiarly acquainted with dirt and how good a part of creation it is.

Farmers are not stupid people. Their work is noble and life-giving, the fruit of their labor rewarding in a way that is unintelligible to someone unfamiliar with the way of the land. Farming is the beginning of all other professions and ways of life, in that we cannot survive without food. Why, then, do politicians and the high placed many times hold that profession in such disdain?

If then Iowa is the true beginning of the campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, it is a good beginning. Farmers should help to ground the high and mighty on any occasion they can get. As I said, politicians should shake as many farmers' hands as possible, if they can endure the crushing grip of a farmer handshake.