Every hand Barack Obama shakes in Iowa could be vital to his presidential hopes. Denis Stauntonjoins him on the stump.
Barack Obama is winding up an hour-long meeting at an old freight house in Chariton, a small prairie town in south-west Iowa, when he looks out at the overwhelmingly rural, white crowd and tells them how lucky they are. "You will probably decide who the next president of the US is going to be," he says. "It's a pretty big responsibility." It's also the reason Obama has spent all day travelling in close to freezing temperatures through this sparse landscape of corn fields and hog farms to speak to small groups of likely voters.
Less than two months away from Iowa's caucus on January 3rd, the first contest of the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama is running just behind Hillary Clinton and just ahead of former senator John Edwards in what is close to a statistical dead heat.
Clinton is so far ahead in all other early voting states that, if she wins Iowa, she is almost certain to sweep the rest, ending the Democratic race as soon it has begun. Obama knows he must win Iowa and he's hoping that his promise of a new kind of politics will sway voters who are yearning for change after the bitterness of the Bush years.
"I've consistently been able to bring people together to get things done. Even though I'm a Democrat, I still listen to Republicans. Even though I'm from the city, I've worked with rural communities. Even though I may be African-American, I come from a family that has folks of every stripe in it," he says.
Toni Reynolds (44) was one of dozens who signed up to support Obama's campaign after the Chariton meeting, promising to recruit at least four more supporters. "I was very impressed. I'm a teacher and my parents are farmers. He's for middle-class America," she says. "I like Hillary Clinton and I think she's very intelligent. I just feel she's a little too tainted by the whole political process. I feel he's more genuine." Sharon Welch, a Republican who is unimpressed by her own party's field, could never vote for Clinton but is considering supporting Obama. "He's a very intelligent man but he's very down to earth. He seems straightforward."
Unlike the primaries held in most states, where party supporters vote in secret ballots for the candidate of their choice, the Iowa caucus demands that voters show up in person, so the electorate could be anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people.
Caucuses are held in schools, church halls or even private homes in each precinct and supporters of each candidate form into groups for a head count. Any candidate who wins the support of less than 15 per cent of those present is declared "not viable" and his or her supporters must move to another candidate or form a group that does have 15 per cent. With Clinton, Obama and Edwards running so close, supporters of less popular candidates such as Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden could ultimately determine who wins Iowa. But for now, it's all about winning over Iowans one by one. For Obama, that means distinguishing himself from Clinton and persuading voters that he represents change in a way that she can't.
Obama's campaign is the most extensive - and expensive - of any in Iowa, with more offices and more paid organisers than any other candidate. Many of his volunteers are in their teens and his campaign targets high-school students, who are allowed to vote in the caucus if they turned 17 by last weekend.
At an old armoury in Fairfield, a little town that is home to the Maharishi University of Management, where the students practise transcendental meditation, he tells his audience that he can unite America more effectively than anyone else.
"I'll be honest with you," he says as he strolls before them in a blue open-neck shirt and brown chinos, "I believe I can do that more effectively than Hillary Clinton. I don't think I carry the baggage of the 1990s and have the same tone and approach that prevents that kind of coming together." Obama has been slow to attack Clinton directly and, even now, his criticisms of her are usually courteous and often coded, as when he promises Fairfield voters he would be honest.
"Part of what you need in the next president is someone who's not going to just tell you what they think you want to hear but will tell you what you need to hear, who will tell you the truth," he says.
After months of flawless campaigning and matchless debate performances, Clinton stumbled in the most recent Democratic debate in Philadelphia, when the other candidates joined with moderator Tim Russert to portray her as two-faced and evasive. She didn't help by apparently contradicting herself on everything from Iraq and Iran to the future of the state pension system and how to treat illegal immigrants.
THE PHILADELPHIA DEBATE may have cost Clinton a few points in the polls but, more importantly, it has energised Edwards and Obama as their supporters glimpse a chance of dislodging the frontrunner.
In policy terms, there is little to separate the three candidates, all of whom want to get out of Iraq (but expect to keep some troops there for years); oppose a war with Iran (but won't rule out an attack to stop the Iranians going nuclear); and promise to introduce universal health care. "My plan, Hillary Clinton's plan, John Edwards's plan - they're not really that different," Obama admits as he talks about health care at a school in Ottumwa, a sprawling town in south-east Iowa. "In 1993, Hillary Clinton tried to pass health care and it wasn't successful. I give her credit for trying. But she went about it the wrong way because she tried to do it behind closed doors." Obama promises to bring stakeholders together to devise a health care plan, creating a round table of doctors, nurses and patients as well as drug and insurance companies. Crucially, it would all happen in full public view. "We'll have our negotiations publicly. If it's open to the American people, then they make good judgments," he says.
This is at the heart of Obama's appeal, the promise of a new approach to politics that is optimistic and consensus-seeking but doesn't pander, and treats voters as mature and sovereign citizens rather than as constituencies or interest groups.
"I am reminded every day of my life - by events and by my wife - that I am not a perfect man. I will not be a perfect president," Obama tells the Fairfield crowd. "But I can promise you this. I will always tell you what I think. I will always tell you where I stand. I'll be honest with you about the challenges we face because some of them won't be easy. I will listen to you even when we disagree. And most important, the most important thing, I want to open up the doors of government back to you. I want you to be involved in your self-government."
The greatest obstacle Obama faces is the perception that after just three years in the US senate, he is too inexperienced to be president. Obama points out that his eight years as a state senator in Illinois give him more legislative experience than either Clinton or Edwards and more than any Republican candidate except John McCain. Beyond that, he believes his personal biography as the son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia can improve America's standing in the world. "The day I'm inaugurated, I think this country looks at itself differently and the world looks at America differently," he says. "Because I've a grandmother who lives in a village in Africa without running water. Because I grew up for a few years in south-east Asia in the largest Muslim country on earth. I would be a more effective messenger to the rest of the world that we are listening to you, we are paying attention to you, that your future is our future."
The symbolism of a black US president would certainly be powerful, but Obama's colour appears not to be an issue in Iowa, where 96 per cent of the population is white. Beverly Coles (67), who came to the Ottumwa meeting with her daughter Jennifer (39) and her mother Gladys (86), hasn't chosen a candidate yet but is veering towards Obama. "I think the biggest thing with him is the possibility of a new outlook, some new ideas. He's younger. He's got a fresh approach and he's got a mind," she says. Gladys is waiting to hear Clinton before she decides, but Obama's performance in Ottumwa seems to have swayed Jennifer. "I hadn't before today, but right now I'm really close to making a commitment. I like his message and I like the way he delivers it," she says.
For his part, Obama seldom mentions race when he's talking to Iowa voters, and one of his few references to colour comes in a joke about the recent news that he is a distant cousin of vice-president Dick Cheney.
"I've been trying to hide this for so long," he says. "I point out that everyone has a black sheep in the family."