From the network reporters to the individual work-a-day Iowa citizen, our national obsession with predicting the results of competitive activities is in full flight. For my part, I will but share a few observations.

 While John Edwards is terribly wrong in his confrontational approach, the realities of which he speaks are apparent to all but the willfully blind.   The last decade has resulted in a diminished lifestyle for vast numbers of Americans.   While driving around this state reveals sparkling malls and new coffee shops (“Expresso Yourself’ was my favorite), knocking on doors reveals the fear for our future and the devastation that is evidenced this winter with a shocking increase in the number of food kitchen supplicants in the face of energy prices and home foreclosures.

 While all the candidates talk about change, the caucus attendees smell the snake oil.  While getting a haircut yesterday in Winterset, Iowa, Jim the barber told me that the Dodd campaign had rented his shop to film campaign advertisements and in doing so asked him to step aside.   Dodd’s campaign brought in actors to play the barbers – even digging out the second chair that he hasn’t used in years.   It was fake from top to bottom and everyone except the pols who made it and the pundits who watched it know it.

All the candidates are drawing huge crowds and therefore predict that they will do well.  The truth is that the large crowds do not reflect support but rather are the result of the fact that the people of Iowa – like people everywhere – truly care about the outcome.   The turnout is going to be huge.   The pundits will say that this is because of students, the number of candidates, the lack on an incumbent, and the skillful organizing of the out of state special interests.   While of superficial accuracy, those observations are as phony as Dodd’s commercials and reflect only the insulation of the nattering political classes.  I have repeatedly sat in the living rooms and looked into the faces of Iowans of all ages who tell me that they are going to caucus for the very first time. They are doing so because they fear for the future of our country.

Finally, it is very obvious that the Obama campaign has caught the imagination of everyone in the state.   While attending a rally for John McCain, who is obviously going to be Republican nominee, the casual hallway chatter was not about the other Republican candidates, but about Obama and how he seems different and of how their spouses and friends are talking about him even if they would never consider voting for him.

 Why?  Allow me so share a story.   Last week, Obama sat alone in back of his campaign bus scribbling on a yellow legal pad.   After an hour, he slid into an empty seat next to his Iowa campaign chair and my friend, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller.  Obama had personally written his final appeal to the voters of Iowa and wanted to know what Tom thought.  (“Don’t change a word” was Tom’s response.).  Obama has now given this speech and I urge you to go to C-Span and catch it.   They are not the words of a speechwriter and they do not come from the latest tracking poll.   They are his and they are real.

And he is why I am in Iowa.