Caucus circus
A caucus or primary night is a perfect example of the value of cable news — if you're a campaign junkie. Sure, I flipped around the dial to see what the networks were doing, but for sheer longevity and wall-to-wall coverage, you can't beat CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. If you want more of everything — full candidate speeches, long-winded bloviation from pundits, and endless digging into (in the case of Iowa) entry polls, that's where you get it.
A few impressions of the evening:
— Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee provided excellent examples of why they won. Obama — who already had a good reputation as speaker but had seemed lackluster at times on the campaign trail — unleashed an emotional stemwinder. Anyone who heard the whole thing couldn't help but see him now as very tough to beat for the nomination.
— Huckabee also made a good speech, but I was impressed with his folksy and humorous banter in an interview with Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. He was like a snake-charmer with these guys. You could see Huckabee's training as a preacher underneath, but leavened (genuine or not) with the folksy southern political warmth. It was way more appealing than the oily, cold-smile persona of Pat Robertson or the corporate glibness of Mitt Romney. Howard Fineman of Newsweek, one of the MSNBC analytical panel, thought it was a hoot that Matthews and Olbermann — for a minute, anyway — seemed ready to pass the plate for Rev. Huckabee.
— Back in 1992, Bill Clinton worked the same mesmerization with the press — stump emotion and personal warmth — to rise above the large Democratic field that year.
— The other candidates were not as impressive in glossing over their disappointment and rallying their troops for New Hampshire or beyond. Hillary, in particular, amid praise for her opponents, created an image of knife-sharpening going on in the back room.
— Hardly anybody mentioned Giuliani. One senses that his strategy of waiting to win in Florida may be a strategy to disappear before Florida.
— I found myself watching MSNBC most, perhaps because when the pundits got tired of talking, they ran full candidate speeches and then reran the whole evening. I have to say, though, that it's a tossup between Matthews and Olbermann as to who can produce the most convoluted, never-ending and self-important questions.
— I kept looking for Chris Kerrigan in the crowd behind John Edwards when the runner-up spoke to the faithful. The Eureka city councilman has been on leave for months, working Iowa for Edwards. Maybe Chris was somewhere having a stiff drink. Never has a second-place finish seemed so . . . uninspiring.