Mitt Romney is at the Pork Tent flipping pork chops on a giant grill with about a dozen camera crews recording the moment for history.
Photo by AP
By: Roger Simon
Aug 11, 2007 08:19 AM EST
DES MOINES -- Today we are at the Iowa State Fair, where politicians meet swine but are rarely mistaken for them.
Mitt Romney is at the Pork Tent being a "guest cook," which means he is flipping pork chops on a giant grill with about a dozen camera crews recording the moment for history.
More than 175 Romney family members -- it's a big family -- have come to Iowa for a gathering Friday night and to help out at the Ames Straw Poll on Saturday and Romney is accompanied at the fair by his wife Ann, three of his five sons, and a slew of grandchildren.
Romney puts on an apron that says: "Mitt Romney. Not a blah cook. The Other White Meat. Don't be blah."
("Don't be blah" is the official marketing slogan of the National Pork Board for reasons best known to it.)
Romney stands behind the giant grill facing about 50 or so pork chops. "Look at this!" he says with enthusiasm.
Then he begins flipping the pork chops with tongs as reporters shout questions at him.
"Is this your favorite food?" a reporter asks.
"I love hot dogs and hamburgers …" Romney begins to answer and then flips a pork chop right off the grill and onto the pea gravel that covers the ground beneath.
"There goes one," Romney says, bending over to recover it with his tongs.
Then, perhaps because he has small grandchildren and knows about the Five Second Rule -- anything recovered from the ground five seconds after a kid throws it there can be stuck back in the kid's mouth without harm -- Romney picks up the pork chop and puts it back on the grill.
And the press corps very loudly goes: "Oooooooo!"
Romney recovers immediately and removes the offending pork chop from the grill and the food chain.
He then he tries to change the conversation.
"Can you get these on a stick?" he asks.
Are you kidding me? There are very few things at the Iowa State Fair you cannot get on a stick, including deep fried Twinkies, deep fried Snickers and deep fried pickles.
Then one reporter asks him: "Is it smart for you to be a flipper?"
"It is part of the process," Romney answers as if he doesn't really understand what the reporter is getting at and then he says, "And this is 'pork barrel' the way it ought to be done, not the way it is done in Washington!"
Romney leaves the grill and begins serving ice tea and water to diners seated inside the Pork Tent, where it is slightly less warm than outside the pork tent, but not by much.
An aide hands Romney a napkin, which he uses to wipe his face. A reporter remarks that he has never seen Romney sweat before.
"It has been known to happen," Romney says dryly.
He then walks over to a large building where there are farm animals for kids to see and pet -- though most kids in Iowa can see and pet farm animals at home -- and Romney picks up his 15-month-old grandson, Parker, in his arms.
"Here are the lambies," Romney says to Parker. "Boy, they must be warm with their winter coats."
Romney gives Parker a chance to pet a lamb, which Parker does with enthusiasm, and then a chance to pet a newborn chick, which Parker does with aplomb and then they wait in line to see a sow suckle a bunch of baby pigs, which, somewhat bizarrely, is also being shown live on a giant TV screen.
"This is a great big pig," Romney says to Parker. Parker appears to consider this, but keeps his own counsel.
Romney chats amiably with the people in line and then leaves in a golf cart to go to his next event.
The official name for all this is "retail politics," which is when politicians meet small groups of people in natural settings.
Iowa and New Hampshire defend their "first in the nation" status because of retail politics, saying that after the campaigns move on from their states, the candidates rely largely on television and speeches to large crowds.
Such "wholesale" campaigning is a more efficient way of reaching voters, but there is something to be said for retail politics and Pamela Seward, 54, says it.
She, along with her husband, has a hog farm in New Providence, Iowa, about 70 miles northeast of Des Moines. She has come in for the fair -- she will not go to Ames on Saturday because she is not all that political -- and has shaken Romney's hand.
She tells Romney she is a pork producer and he asks her, "Do you raise corn and beans as well?"
Which shows that Romney is agriculturally astute since most hog farmers do raise corn and beans as well.
It is but a brief moment, but Seward will remember it. Which is what retail politics is all about.
Those who think politicking will eventually be done only in the electronic media or in cyberspace misjudge how Americans value and respect the presidency -- no matter what they think of individual presidents -- and how meaningful it is for them actually to meet somebody who is or may become president.
"When I was six, I met Richard Nixon," Seward tells me. "Regardless of what he turned out to be, that was pretty neat. And now, if Romney becomes president, then I will have met another president of the United States. In person. And that is neat."
And she is right. It is.
