Iowa is going to be all it’s supposed to be in American election mythology: the place where some campaigns run out of gas, some crack up on the road to the nomination and two emerge as the leaders going into New Hampshire. That’s what my wife and I saw this Saturday in Des Moines.

We saw Obama at the Farmers’ Union early in the day and from 7 to nearly midnight the whole line-up, plus the local stars, at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner. Our son works as a field organizer for Obama in Kossuth County, several hours’ drive north toward Minnesota, so we also fortified ourselves for the evening talkathon at the wine & cheese party for Democrats of that region held in the party room of a condominium tower.

Talking to the 200 or so farmers and members of the Communications Workers of America, Obama nailed all the important points. His speech showed mastery of all their issues. Having run for nearly a year now, he has mastered the art of wrapping his general themes around audience-specific concerns. Like almost everything else about campaigning for President, the delivery of the “red meat” is harder than it looks, when it’s done well. Most important, and hardest of all to sustain, Obama appeared to be enjoying himself. The campaign now is moving into the days of decision, where voters pay enough attention finally to make up their mind. Now is when the candidates need physical stamina, an optimistic attitude, rapid and intuitive decision-making, and an organization that can avoid mistakes. He showed these traits in his morning talk. He afterwards commented that the evening promised to be “fun” – and he meant it. If the candidate is enjoying this arduous process, that’s half the way toward victory; there are so many reasons to be tired of it by this stage.

The streets around the Veteran’s arena blossomed with signage. Clinton signs predominated but Obama’s “Hope” triumphed aesthetically. Making our way past the Ron Paulites, who resembled an amalgam of hippies and homeless, we snaked slowly through the metal detectors and on to the large floor. In the center was the stage. On three sides were about 300 tables, sitting perhaps 10 each, at $100 a head for the out-of-towners at least, and on the fourth side was the familiar mix of unfeeling cameras and nearly insensate journalists that marks a political event in modern America. The eyes of the country were on the candidates, except that in blink or two the national gaze would shift toward Britney Spears, the National Football League, or the New York Stock Exchange.

In the three-sided balconies above the floor were the sign-toting cheerleading myrmidons of the different candidates. Each campaign grouped its squadrons and marked them by colored t-shirts: the biggest number was the red for Obama, second biggest the yellow of Clinton, third, the blue for Edwards, and the others so few in number as to leave no visual impression, thereby signifying their impending defeat in the night’s battle to make noise.

The balconies had no food, perhaps on the assumption that the young could go without eating for hours on end. Below, at the tables, we had salad and cake already laid down, and the chicken bounced by soon after we arrived. We were to dine chiefly on words, and plenty of them.

Based on the marks of badges and signs, no one above and hardly anyone on the floor below had an open mind about the candidates. The candidates must have known they were speaking, therefore, in order to encourage their supporters, demoralize their opponents, hone their messages for the crucial days between now and the January 3 caucuses, and – most important – to have the media pass to voters in Iowa and the rest of the country the essence of their presentations. So too the balconied youths chanted and signed to bolster their leaders, buoy their own spirits, and intimidate the rival teams. It was a six-team basketball game, with one person playing for each team, and shooting words not balls.

Speaker Pelosi introduced every speaker on the long list comprising prominent Iowans and the six candidates. (Kucinich and Gravel were disinvited due to their lack of organization in the state.). She gave a remarkably even-handed and generous summary of the background of each person. Of particular note, she pronounced the tongue-twisting names of the Iowan Democratic Congressional delegation with impeccable elocution not once, but several times, so that the foursome (don’t ask me) came to resemble a repeated phrase in a great oral battle epic, like Beowulf or the Iliad. The auction of a piece of her clothing and the donkey (bought by Mr. Pelosi) I missed due to an adventure with our rental car (don’t ask), but everyone is still talking about that humorous interlude and the donkey is said to be happy.

Perhaps just a little over the top, however, was Pelosi’s insistence on calling each candidate to the stage with the phrase – “the next President of the United States.” For the Little Three of Dodd, Biden, and Richardson, this crown is as likely to be worn by them as say, Jack Falstaff instead of his friend Hal. Falstaffian would be an unfair way to describe their self-descriptions but in truth none of the Little Three showed the skills, the command of issues, and certainly not the number of supporters as the Big Three of Edwards, Clinton, and Obama. It’s worth noting, before Iowa dispatches their quixotic quests, that any of the Little Three would make a better President than any of the Republican nominees, unless of course one wishes to believe that the real Mitt Romney’s body has only temporarily been inhabited by the Romney who is running for President. (If the father was brainwashed about Vietnam, the son has brainwashed himself in order to run as an extreme conservative.)

Of the six candidates, John Edwards went first, picked allegedly by lottery, although no one believed that an indifferent fate arranged such a fine lead-off and also the concluding pairing of Clinton and Obama back to back at the end, so that no one could leave early. Like Clinton and Obama nearly four hours later, he was practiced, eloquent, impassioned, and absolutely terrific. The Republicans have no one like him for style, and the Democrats have no one like him for positioning – he is on the left of the rest, less because he has radical proposals and more because he casts himself rhetorically as a populist champion of the poor, the plaintive, the dispossessed and the needy against the power elite of corporations and indifferent government. He comes out of the Democratic South of the 1930’s, absent the racism of course. I was surprised he did not discuss more the serious cracks in the economy through which so many are falling. The depth of his critique was not great. But I would have voted for his client in any jury room deliberations.

Whether Edwards can succeed at being his own client, however, is another matter. Sometime in the long four years of his campaign, Edwards probably should have decided not to be such a fine courtroom advocate when seeking support for himself instead of others. His polish verges on diffidence. His personal history seems researched more than recalled; he is so smooth and smart that he does not appear to be the same person he describes as growing up poor in a mill town. Change has blown away that town, that time, and that antecedent of this person, so that this articulate and handsome figure has trouble proving not that he cares about the lower middle class and the poor where he seeks votes, but rather that he was or is one of them. And that lack of connection is, I think, at the root of the allegation of insincerity that follows his campaign; I do not believe the charge but one can see from what it is derived.

And surely no one else in that mill town of his youth ever learned to talk as brilliantly as Edwards does! Standing on the large stage before the cameras he walked left and right to hold the audience, he spoke as they all did without notes or teleprompter, and never missed a word or a beat. His performance set a high standard for those who followed.

In fact, the Little Three came after, interleaved by the Governor and Lt. Governor of Iowa congratulating each other, as well they should, for their successful campaign a year ago, and the lifelong noble progressive Tom Harkin, as well as some of the Congressional delegation, including the auction-caller.

The Little Three were collectively the voice of experience. They have each and all served prodigious amounts of time in government. Dodd started working for the public as a Peace Corps member in the 60’s and entered the Senate in 1981. Indeed, he is not just a nearly career-long Senator but is the son of a Senator. Biden was elected to the Senate at age 29!, in 1973. Richardson has held more important government jobs than any two of the candidates combined. As a result, they provided an unwitting set-up to Senator Clinton’s familiar charge, made Saturday night without naming her chief rival who by the convention of the evening was not to be named, that Obama lacks experience. Ironically, measured by the standards of any of the Little Three, none of the Big Three has enough experience to be President. Biden, for example, will have been in the Senate for 35 years by next January, compared to a collective total of 18 years in that august and terminally moderating body for the Big Three.

Hillary is a first name celebrity, like A-Rod, Madonna, and I guess Rudy, and therefore one does not believe she can tell us anything new about herself. Everything she says and does, we think, just proves what we already believe about her. Yet I was surprised, when she came in, by her mastery of the confident bounding stride of the big person, even though she is not physically prepossessing. Entrances are hard; indeed her career as an elected official has been a difficult, late-in-life entrance for her, given that a 30 year lapse between college and running for office is by no means common in politics. Yet she made her way into the ranks of the elected by virtue of her fame, the power of the Clinton machine, her indefatigable commitment, her thorough preparation, and her remarkable focus on mitigating the effects of the Republican assault on her and her husband in the 90’s. So too she entered the large hall Saturday night lifted up by the deafening cheers from her balconied supporters and, one felt, the strength of the national army of Clintonistas. And totally alone under the lights and on the big stage, she instantly commanded the attention of the whole arena, in the same way she has established herself as the front-runner nationally.

Oddly, she started off, however, with a defensive tone, as if she assumed she had been lambasted by the earlier speakers. If that’s what she expected in preparing her remarks, the guess was wrong and so the tone was unnecessary. Perhaps she was just staking out a line of defense before Obama came on. She did, as so often before this year, claim that her experience makes her the right nominee and the apt President. Compared to the Little Three, this assertion was not overpowering, but of course the intended comparison was just to Obama. He’s the one she has to beat; her campaign is totally directed at defeating him. I suppose that she is absolutely sure that her centrism is broad enough, her debating skills good enough, and her money reserves deep enough to defeat Edwards if he emerges as the one serious rival. Logic suggests that there will indeed be, perhaps right after Iowa, one serious rival. If that is Edwards, I would say Hillary indeed will beat him. Her vulnerabilities lie in the doubt that it is good idea to go back to the 90s to find the candidate for the 10s, and Edwards, for all his youthful looks, does not present himself as the candidate of the future. His passion comes instead from the New Deal, if not the 1890s.

Hillary’s speech included a call-and-response with her chorus. She asked a question, and they answered “Turn up the heat.” This linkage was a little odd when her question concerned global warming, but aside from that solecism, the technique worked very well. Its purport was that she will fight for progressive causes, although her policy positions are the least progressive of any of the candidates. Her effort over the next two months will be to prove she is a fighter; that’s what all candidates do to close the deal with voters in the final stretch, and the voters she needs are to the left of many of her positions over the last eight years.

Hillary is a terrific candidate. It’s impossible not to be impressed by her. Her closing was impassioned; her voice commanding; her presence large. Bill Clinton was the only absent spouse, and to my way of thinking that worked for her. Even when he’s standing on the side with his hands clasped and the attentive look on his face, he is a magnetic presence. Although the spouses were scarcely present in the program, and not anywhere near the stage during the individual performances, nevertheless Bill Clinton is at all times a scene-stealer even when he does not want to be, so she did right not to have him there.

In the category of spouses, Michelle Obama, obviously, is unknown relative to President Clinton. Yet she is stunningly attractive, model-style tall and slender, and immensely gracious, so that merely by being present she intensifies the luminosity even of her high wattage husband. They are each celebrities and together they are coming to be a celebrity couple, not perhaps Brangelina or Billary, but still very huge. For a married Presidential candidate, couple-fame is a great asset, because it helps voters get a better grasp on what the candidate is like.

The Obamas as a couple invoke the feeling that Americans acting together can shape their own destiny according to the ethics of fairness, egalitarianism, and an optimistic confidence in our problem-solving capability. This is a good feeling to create in Americans. It is a big asset for the Obamas to evoke that response in voters have.

Bill and Hillary Clinton decided, wisely, more than a year ago that they also would use couples-fame as an asset, as opposed to trying to present Hillary Clinton as a candidate with a different point of view than her husband. His moderate image, centrist positioning, and harking back to the “golden age” of the 90’s is at the core of her campaign.

Obama spoke last, and yet the waiting time had not dulled his evident enjoyment in delivering his well-prepared speech with sparkle and conviction. I liked it that one long voice called out, at the beginning, “we love you” and he answered, “I love you back.” The phrasing itself was not 20th century. I enjoyed his brief but pointed focus on climate change as a reason why we have to learn to act boldly and cooperatively. I didn’t hear any other candidate give the topic adequate attention, although I was absent from time to time. (It was a very long evening.)

Obama chose to speak largely to the question of why he was running. This gave him a chance to explain who he was, which he did eloquently. It also afforded him the opportunity to link himself to the changes he wishes to make happen. The litany was sound, and very well delivered. Fortunately he did not dwell on Social Security (I hate that issue, since there is no crisis) and did highlight global warming, which none of the others did so well. However, the fundamental question of the caucuses, I suspect, is not whether he is sincere in his aspirations or whether his goals are sound. He shines with sincerity. Nor does anyone doubt his ability to think through problems. Nor is there any doubt about how he expresses himself. He gave me a frisson of excitement and I was not alone. The question he has to answer is whether he can make happen the changes he calls for. This is the challenge that Hillary expresses by her contention that he lacks experience.

Of course, if resumes were running instead of people, Richardson, Dodd, or Biden would be in the lead. So we know experience is not the only important attribute. Yet experience is useful insofar as it provides a basis for judging the candidate’s ability to succeed. In the case of Senators Biden and Dodd, for instance, their experience tends to disqualify them for the Presidency. They are fine Senators but like long-time servers in any line of work, their proportion of accomplishment to tenure has decreased over time. They do not seem likely to be the solvers of the many new problems facing the country, especially global warming, income inequality, and the decline of efficacy in multilateral organizations.

Similarly, when Obama questions Hillary’s Iraq and Iran votes, he is asking whether the record of her voting votes tells us that she is or is not likely to lead America in the direction most Democrats want. And when she questions his experience, she cannot seriously challenge his intelligence or base of knowledge. She must instead call into question his votes both in the state legislature and in the Senate, and his expressed positions on issues.

Another version of “experience” is the voters’ experience with the individual. President Bush’s problem with the American people now is that their experience of him is long enough that he cannot really persuade them he can lead in the directions most want to see the country go. As to Clinton, the voters’ actual experience with her leadership is fairly slender, except in New York State. The same is true of Obama; in Illinois there is much experience with him, but not so much on a national level. In both cases, the candidates are more well-known than they are “experienced” in the interaction of real leadership and voters’ expectations.

There’s nothing unusual about the lack of experience between voters and candidates at this stage of the primaries. In Iowa, as in New Hampshire, the experience that usually determines the outcome is the personal interaction in rooms ranging from homes to halls of many sizes. The overlay is the virtual experience obtained through advertising and journalism. None of the Big Three in fact is running on a record of having led the nation. (By contrast, Al Gore did that to a degree, and of course a second-term President must do that.) The normal situation is the one presented now: the real experience that counts is the one that the candidates try to create with the voters in the small states. Americans outside Iowa and New Hampshire are supposed to infer that they would have a similar experience if they had a chance to obtain it, and so the voting results in Iowa and New Hampshire are deemed to be a practical and useful way to judge the experience voters in those small states have gained with the candidates. That’s the way the myth goes, and in Iowa last Saturday night it seemed real enough, useful enough, and certainly likely to be, again this cycle, the way the election will play out