Entire country as we winnow the field. I cannot be more excited for todays panel of experts who will die further into this. Our program will include one hour discussing the history of the Iowa Caucuses with a short 30 minute break where you can enjoy refreshments and visited the first in the nation exhibit on the first floor. We will then come back for an hour long discussion about the horserace of the current field of candidates. Now, it is my pleasure to introduce todays moderator. This iowa native is one of the best in the business. Having spent 34 years as a political reporter for the Des Moines Register, please join me yepsen. Ming david david thank you, susan. Museum andhank the staff for hosting this conversation. For better or worse, the iowa precinct caucuses have played a role in the election of american president s. And also, they have all spent time helping hardworking reporters seeking to make sense of it all. Starting from your left, they ldford, drake hoffman, theonna diaersity of northern iowa, nne bystrom iowa university, of iowaschmidt university, Kelly Winfrey, and pedro squire, university of missouri and formerly of the university of iowa. I might add in the interest of hype, this is probable the largest panel of iowa political scientists assembled on stage to talk about the caucuses. [applause] david i think it is only areing in this era where we all involved in watching a large field of democrats, it is good this is happening in state that is used for large cattle shows and debate stages. In keeping with the theme, i am told each scholar will have eight seconds to respond in two seconds to respond to attacks. As susan mentioned, we will have two discussions today. I want to thank the museum for this work and trying to develop a greater understanding of what our very significant evidence in s political history. I would like to thank cspan for being here today and making this accessible all over the world. I am a cspan junkie myself. I know many of you are. We appreciate them taking the time to make this a nationwide event where people from all over the country can participate and watch this discussion. [applause] david the first question, i will start with you. I would like to get a comment from each person on this stage. What is the significance of the caucuses in the nations political history and iowas political history . Have they been a good thing or bad thing for democracy . Dennis increasingly, i thought, caucuses are great for us, they give us things to do. We meet people across the country. We get to meet candidates. Help moderate appearances. Whether there is something good for the process itself of nominating a president , i am becoming less confident of that. We have to remember, iowa is not first because we are important, iowa is important because we are first. In any nomination process, whoever goes first is going to have extraordinary importance in the process. I think that we know this is historical accident, the way this arose. It is not the case that the Democratic National committee, Republican National committee had a set of criteria by which they decided which state could go first and by a rational basis, it turns out iowa fulfills those criteria. It is serendipity. It is historical accident. Until the rest of the country and the other states do not like iowas position, until everybody else can decide what should replace this process, iowa stays where we are by inertia. In that sense, it is a game theory problem. Everybody else wants to go first. Nobody is willing to let somebody else go first. My take is different. I think the caucuses remain a valuable part of the nomination process primarily because iowa ns take them seriously. The research i have done shows that iowans spend a lot of time thinking about what is going on, paying attention to candidates and events. Most importantly, because of ial approach iowa voters , provide information to later states about their sincere preferences, who they really think should be the nominee, not some kind of strategic effort. Unlike most States Iowans are , more likely to vote sincerely. That is, pick the candidate they like whether or not they think the candidate has a chance. Voters later on can use the information within the party to think about ok, where should we , go with this . I think that is a valuable part of the process. If someone else went first, eventually they would develop the same cabability. Iowa has been doing it for so long, iowans have a good sense of what is going on. David professor Kelly Winfrey. Donna donna hoffman. I would say i will take a different spin on this. One of the things a colleague and i have looked at this in terms of research, the role the caucuses play in strengthening parties within the state. Iowa has strong, healthy Political Parties and that is good for democracy even though a lot of people tend to want to issue parties, parties are a thing that are important. I will give an example. A year ago, we had a state senator in iowa who decided to retire. We had a special election. Of 2019. In march this person, this race garnered attention. The democrat in the race, who ended up winning, it was held by a democrat, estimated he had 10 president ial candidates do various things for him, including recording videos, encouraging people to vote. At was a special election. You have to get turnout up. Walking doortodoor in the neighborhoods. These are candidates themselves. About 10 of the candidates did that for this person. That helps the Political Parties in the state. That also keep the Political Parties competitive in the state as well, which helps iowa in the general election also. I amnk im going to going to agree with dennis. I lived in iowa for 26 years from 1996 through 2018. I now live in nebraska south of omaha. What i think over the years, when i was here, i felt the same thing others have said that iowans are serious about their choices. But i see this year something different, particularly on the democratic side. I worry about the participation in the caucuses and how hard it citizens to actually participate. They could be disabled, could have child care, could have to work. That worries me and what really worries me, i look at the field of democrat and i see in iowa the top three contenders are all white guys and it worries me about our field, other states will have to deal with and not having a more diverse field. David you do not put Elizabeth Warren in the top tier . I put her in the top four, but im saying the top three. Chmidt. Steffen s thank you. I came here in 1970 two start being at a university. In 1970 to start being an academic at the university. I have seen all the caucuses that make a difference. There were caucuses before the jimmy carter victory, but they were party events where you elect officers and do campaign plans and raise money. It is interesting for me to see pretty much the same questions raised every four years about the caucuses. Every four years. One of the things that comes up, as you get closer to the date of the caucuses, isnt there somebody better than the people who are running right now . Somebody who can really win and is really president ial . The answer is, no. There is nobody better. Simply because the process is, people present themselves, there elimination of the ones who cannot seem to get any traction, raise money, do well in polls. Then someone emerges as the candidate. That is the way it works. Maybe there are better ways to do it. We will talk about that later, maybe towards the end. During the attack tell party. During the Cocktail Party. There is no Cocktail Party . Im sorry. That is another event later in the month. I think it is an interesting process. It gives the news media something to do in times when there is no news because they can send reporters to iowa and report about hay bales and cattle and pancakes being flipped and deepfried things. I think the caucuses have a great historical place in american politics. At some point, maybe we move on to Something Else. I think it is an effective way to get out messages. I moved here six years ago. This is my second cycle in iowa. I have heard about it before i got here. I studied political campaigns. It is something that is unique. First, it is good for me. It is good for me professionally and my personal interests. I think there are some advantages to a system like this. It does allow candidates with low name recognition to stand out when they would not be able to in a national primary. If we went to the people who were pulling at the top before the caucus process started, joe biden be our candidate, Rudy Giuliani would be a candidate in 2008. Things shaft. Iowa has an important part. I also worry about how representative it is in terms of both how white our state is and candidates we end up selecting. There are some ways we can address that and keep the iowa caucus or Something Else comes along that better suits our current needs given the need for diversity and the number of candidates we have competing. Let me sum up what a lot of my colleagues have said. One thing i want to remind iowans is how special this process is. Having driven up this morning from columbia, missouri, the rest of the country is unaware there is an election coming. I was reminded when i passed the amy for america bus on 163. This is an unusual process. It is not the way it has always been. Our nomination systems have evolved over history. Configured will probably not last well into the future. One, enjoy it while it is here. Two, make sure you take advantage of it. It is a rare opportunity. In columbia, missouri, we have no president ial candidates running ads. We are protected from that. Your world will return to normal a month from now. As it stands right now, you get to be in the spotlight, so enjoy it. David some of us are looking forward to the resumption of farm chemical advertisements on television. Lets go back to the beginning. Tell us about 1968. What was happening in america . How this led to the early caucuses. 1968, as many people remember or know from history books, was a tough year. We had the troops sent to vietnam. Goldwater used to say during the convention, everyone is afraid that if they vote for me, we will have troops in vietnam. He said after johnson was reelected, people voted for me have troops in vietnam. We have about a half million troops in vietnam and that sparked an antiwar movement. He had the civil rights movement, the assassination of dr. King, the assassination of bobby kennedy. It was a tough time. We had the disastrous Democratic Convention in august of 1968, later called a police riot. Just to be quick, i will note that prior to or through 1968, certainly prior to 1972, only 25 of National Convention delegates were chosen through primaries. Most of the time, party officials, governors, senators, party chairs and so forth, they went to the National Convention with these votes in their pockets for the delegates for their state and spent them as wisely as they thought they could. When john kennedy ran in the 1960 West Virginia primary, he did not do it to get votes are delegates, he did it to show that a catholic candidate could get votes in a protestant state. Through 1968, only 25 of delegates were chosen through primaries. With the 1968 convention, the reaction was that the three most activated groups new to the process, single women, young people, and minorities had been locked out. With the disaster that occurred in chicago, there was impetus to change the process to open the nomination more to groups that had not been old white males. David that resulted in something called the Mcgovern Fraser commission. The party decided they would have earlier in events to allow more people to participate. Talk about 1972, george mcgovern, the first rounds of these caucuses. Dennis when we trace the history of caucuses, 1972 stands out. It is seen as having been the milestone where the iowa caucus attained the status that they enjoy today. That is a little bit misguided. Not many people paid attention to the Iowa Caucuses in 1972. They were first on the calendar purely by accident. It had to do with the rules by which the Iowa Democratic party operated and when they counted back in various states, they had to meet for the stages and caucuses they arrived at the beginning of a calendar and nobody paid attention and nobody made much of a fuss about it. The candidates did not make a fuss about it. We look at it now in retrospect and see that mcgovern did better than people anticipated and that was the first inkling that maybe he was going to go onto the nomination. He only spent a day and a half in the state before the caucuses. The media did not spend much time discussing them. After they occurred. It is not until 1976 that you see the modern caucus with all the attention that we begin to see starting with jimmy carter and his efforts. David there was something significant that happened in 1972. There were few political reporters who were here. One of them being johnny appel of the new york times, who wrote in his piece about the contest about the caucus that night that mcgovern had an unexpectedly strong secondplace showing. We start with this expectations game. Won but mcgovern did well, better than expected. Lets go to 1976. Jimmy carter picks up the playbook that mcgovern and his Campaign Manager wrote. What happened . Dennis that expectation game becomes built into the process with 1976. Jimmy carter was a virtually unknown governor of a Southern State that nobody paid attention to. When he said he was going to run for president , no one was excited about that. There were other democrats who were plausible candidates. What the Jimmy Carter Campaign did was actually campaign. From the time jimmy carter announced he would run, he began running a grassroots campaign. He was out there. He himself in iowa was knocking on doors. They were Building Campaign committees around the state. They were doing the kinds of things that we now take for granted in an iowa caucus nobody hadt that ever done before. So jimmy carter the Jimmy Carter Campaign creates this sense that something is going on in iowa and manages, partly on the followup to the story about 1972, to convince the media that what happens in iowa is going to matter and uses iowa as a springboard, a way to say, this guy from georgia you never heard of is a viable candidate because a bunch of people in iowa who had never heard of him either voted for him. Goes, won the story the caucuses and used that as the jumping off point to win the nomination and win the presidency and in winning the , presidency, sets up the underlying myth that you have to win iowa to win the presidency. That turns out to be very untrue for democrats for pretty much the rest of the caucuses until we get to barack obama. Nonetheless, the myth is there, it is built on, and things start happening with respect to iowa. On the republican side, there was nothing going on from a caucus perspective yet. That does not come until later. It is worth noting, jerry ford was under pressure from Ronald Reagan, and i remember as a teenager watching that convention and the uncertainty about whether or not ford had the delegates to win the run in 1976, part of why jimmy carter won the presidency was jerry fords we can stay. The idea that iowa meant something start with that. Jimmy carter did not win the cog of this. When the caucuses. In the caucuses. He lost to uncommitted. Of the things whether 1976 campaign on the republican side, they did a straw poll at caucuses. It was the first time the two parties caucused together. Jerry 41, but Ronald Reagan was strong. Reporters and people after the election said, Ronald Reagan illustrated fords weaknesses as a candidate and in the republican party. Underscoring that these people and iowa are telling us things that happened later. The government power to the antiwar movement. Jimmy carter goes the distance. Ford is vulnerable. In 1980, one of the super bowl campaigns in caucuses, talk about carter and kennedy. Fen there is a parallel between what is going on today and what happened in 1980. There were two candidates who were strong, visible, good name recognition. Ted kennedy of course. The blue blooded massachusetts senator and jimmy carter, who as we were just told, was jimmy who , who came out of this and was president. It became a battle between should we elect someone who is safe and who is president and is named jimmy carter, or should we move the party to the left and have ted kennedy become the standard bearer . It was a difficult fight inside the party and what it did was thentially, it cleaved party into two factions. We see some of that happening today. A lot of the discussion today is about moving left or staying safe in the barack obama, joe biden middle. It peaked at the Democratic Convention in Madison Square garden, where the fight became visible, the fight was covered, ted kennedy was struggling to get enough delegates and jimmy carter to hang on. It is not often you have an incumbent president successfully challenged. We know that eventually, jimmy carter prevailed and was on a course to reelection until another historical moment that has parallels today. What time is it . The iranian hostage crisis broke out, the iranian radicals who had overthrown the sha took over the american embassy, took american diplomats hostage, they were on television blindfolded, marched out of the embassy. Some of you my students here you do not remember that. It was dramatic. It was as dramatic as if you watch cnn today, what is going on with iran today. Jimmy carter was unable to successfully respond to that crisis and therefore, lost reelection. It was a moment you should study this a little bit, that history, kennedy moved to the left, maybe that would have worked better. Sometimes, there are parallels. Often there are no parallels. , sometimes there are. David on