The No-Shows of Madison County

WINTERSET, Iowa —  This farm community outside Des Moines is known for two things: being home to the covered bridges of Madison County and the birthplace of John Wayne.

If you’re a tourist, movie buff or just a curious passerby, you’re welcome to stop in, have a look around, folks here say. But if you’re a Democratic hopeful on the presidential campaign trail in the dwindling days before Monday’s Iowa caucuses, well then, you can just keep right on going.

Winterset is tired of talking politics. Locals are weary of campaign speeches and Swiss-cheese promises. They’re tired of gotcha ads, down-and-dirty political mailers and those annoying computer-driven phone messages from candidates who don’t really give a hoot about Iowa in the first place.

And if Democratic voters are numbed by the onslaught, Republicans loyal to George W. Bush stopped listening a long time ago. After nearly a year of enduring nonstop politicking and millions of dollars in advertising, most everybody in this town of 4,700 say they’ve heard enough.

Iowa’s caucuses are the first chance Democrats will get to have their say about who will oppose President Bush in November.

But for all their importance politically and for all the obsessive attention of the national news media, few people here in Winterset -- or elsewhere in Iowa -- will actually participate.

Fewer than 20% of the state’s 550,000 registered Democrats are expected to take part in the political process. This means that four out of five Iowans won’t even be on hand come caucuses night.

Those no-shows will probably include the regulars at the Fountain lunch counter inside the Rexall drug store on Winterset’s cozy town square. With a wink, they’ll tell you that bridges don’t vote and that the Duke, the beloved native son of these surrounding corn and soybean fields, didn’t much care for politics either.

At the Fountain, the buzz isn’t about Medicaid or marshaling troops to Iraq, but about the year-old mystery of who might be setting fire to the covered bridges made famous in the book and movie “The Bridges of Madison County.” Folks are trying to guess who might have set those fires and the one at the house where Francesca Johnson -- played by Meryl Streep -- had her fling with Clint Eastwood in the role of Robert Kincaid.

“People here are just sick and tired of politics and politicians,” Don Bolton, a retired local bank president and a Democrat, said as he sat at the counter Monday, nursing his third cup of morning coffee.

“I don’t pay any attention to any of them anymore. I see them on TV and I turn the channel. If they call my house, I just hang up the phone.”

Sitting beneath a portrait of George Washington and Coca-Cola posters from the 1940s, retired farmer Donald Welch said “the dung storm” of political rhetoric had made him lose faith in a man’s word, something usually good as gold in farm country.

“These politicians look you right in the eye and tell you what they’re going to do when they get to the White House,” he says, pulling up his elastic suspenders. “Well, you know darned right that they’re either lying or they’re dreaming.”

With its caucuses on Monday, Iowa will provide a litmus test for the nine Democratic candidates hoping to oppose Bush in November.

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark have opted out of Iowa to focus on the New Hampshire primary the following week.

While many Americans are only beginning to make up their minds about the presidential election, Iowans have been caught in the Democratic side of the race since candidates began canvassing the state early last year.

On Monday, Iowa Democrats will turn out at 1,993 caucus sites across the Hawkeye State on what is likely be a cold and blustery night.

Glen Swede won’t be there.

“Politics is for women anymore,” says the 70-year-old retired clothing store owner, sitting on his regular corner stool at the Fountain.

“Get my wife down here and she’ll talk your ear off. Me, I’m too busy. Unless they’ve got money to give away.”

Only Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri has made a personal visit to Winterset, although Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina is scheduled to visit the VFW Hall on Friday night. Swede recalled looking out the drugstore window into the town square during the reception for Gephardt and seeing that “90% of the people there were women.”

“The men are all tired,” he says.

Iowa Democratic Party officials know that many residents believe the campaigning starts too early, but they don’t plan to change things.

“We welcome the attention from the candidates -- it’s good for Iowa,” says state party spokesman Mark Daley. “Some people have had enough. Luckily for them, there’s only one week left.”

Kathy Dingman can’t wait. The Fountain waitress knows the orders of most customers before they even ask.

On a recent morning, she chatted with the gentle retirees old enough to be her father, men who pull their tips from oval plastic change purses.

She listens to their stories about broken tractors and herds of deer that stop traffic on country roads.

Dingman can listen to just about anything. Except politics.

“I’m already overdosed on the debates,” she says. “We’ve already had three here. How many do we need?”

Retired Winterset postmaster Wayne Kile slides onto a Fountain stool. Sure, he’s seen his share of political ads and commercials, but he thinks giving the candidates a close-up view of Iowa dispels some stereotypes that residents here are “just a bunch of hickish down-on-the-farm know-nothings with overalls and straw hats.”

“People complain,” he adds, “but if you took that January caucus out of Iowa, they’d all start crying like you just took their newborn baby away.”

Around the corner at the Country Cutters hair salon, customer Anne Sedars, planted under a hair dryer, says the caucuses put Iowa on the map.

“Just this morning, the day after that debate, NBC had the temperature in Iowa -- on national TV!” she says as owner Sheila Stewart rolls her eyes. “It won’t be there next month.”

At the salon, the Fountain counter or any other meeting place in this county of 14,000, longtime residents have plenty of other things to occupy their minds. Like the high school wrestling coach with five children who was killed last week in a car wreck outside town. Or the new exhibit at the John Wayne Birthplace museum.

Folks marvel over the $30,000 reward offered in the case of the two burned bridges, including Cedar Bridge, which was destroyed. It was featured in “The Bridges of Madison County” -- filmed in Winterset -- and on the cover of the novel by Robert James Waller.

But politics are off-limits.

“Pretty soon now, they’ll all be moving on,” Fountain regular Dean Decker says of the Democratic candidates. “And New Hampshire can have ‘em.”

Counters his coffee-guzzling partner, Darrel Rueben: “Oh, they’ll be back. Pretty soon, they’re going to start campaigning for the 2008 election.”