KEY POINTS:
On the face of it, the shape of this year's American presidential race should already be set in stone. The Democrats, buoyed both by victory in the midterm Congressional elections and George W. Bush's ongoing unpopularity, have every incentive to settle at the first opportunity on a candidate who will sweep them into the White House. Internecine fighting seems unnecessary and potentially distracting for an electorate that appears eager for change.
Yet with the starting gun about to sound in Iowa, the contest has become wide open. Polls for the Iowa caucuses show that on the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton holds a slight lead over Barack Obama, with the populist John Edwards a close third. In the Republican camp the race is also tight, understandably given the fissures generated by the Bush presidency. Christian conservative Mike Huckabee, who boasts neither money nor foreign policy nous, has made considerable ground to be virtually tied with Mitt Romney, a Mormon and former governor of Massachusetts. A third candidate, John McCain, is now making inroads, while the national front runner, Rudy Giuliani, is taking a significant risk in bypassing Iowa and the primary in New Hampshire five days later, hoping to catch up on February 5, when 22 states vote.
The danger in the former New York mayor's strategy is that presidential campaigns are all about momentum built in the early primaries. Never was this better demonstrated than in 2004 when Democrat John Kerry won in Iowa over Howard Dean, who had led in national polls for 12 months. Kerry triumphed again in New Hampshire and never looked back.
Giuliani is faring well in national polls but has avoided Iowa, where his liberalism on social issues, three marriages and readiness to contemplate gun control place him at a substantial disadvantage. He is gambling, in effect, on voters in other areas seeing the Iowa verdict as that of an unrepresentative, small, dominantly white and rural midwestern state, not heartland America.
Among the Democrats it is Obama, the Illinois senator bidding to become the first black president, who enters the primaries with momentum. He has performed strongly in the intimate politics of small states, echoing memories of John F. Kennedy. For Obama, more than any other candidate, victory this week is pivotal. "No one is going to have more influence over who is going to be leader of the free world than the people of Iowa," he told a meeting.
If Obama stumbles, Clinton, the long-time national front-runner, probably has both the finances and the stamina to march to victory at the Democratic convention in late August. She has run a hesitant campaign that has sought to be error-free but has, nonetheless, been dogged by minor controversy. Much of the unease about her reflects residual ill feeling from her husband's presidency.
Indeed, she presents the Democrats with a conundrum. She is the safe, politically experienced choice but also more likely than Obama to be beaten by the feistiness of Giuliani if he can ease past the safer options among the Republican candidates.
Most of all, Iowa is an acid test for Clinton and Romney. Both are politicians of the old school underpinned by strong fundraising. Both have seen commanding leads eroded. Both have discovered that slick packaging and cautious policies may not be enough to clear the first hurdles.
The early primaries are valuable for being held in lightly populated states where candidates are assessed in personal appearances before discerning party supporters. The choices made by the electors of Iowa tomorrow will give the world its first glimpse of where the United States may be headed.
