What's the Matter with Iowa?

The political leaders we choose say a lot about who we are. Who are we are today?

In the Fall of 1973, I was a college student at Iowa State University in Ames, and a budding young reporter at the campus radio station. Republican Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandals were rapidly unraveling, and we were then learning that Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew was as big a crook as Nixon, only more tawdry.

It seemed there were new developments in both scandals daily. It was an astonishing time to live through and a remarkable time to be trying to start a career in journalism.

With that backdrop, early one evening, Iowa’s Republican Governor Robert D. Ray visited the ISU campus to speak to a group of young Republicans.

I attended the event to cover it. With microphone and tape recorder in hand, I also hoped to score an interview with the Governor following his speech. Ray was Iowa’s top Republican and the former State Chairman of the Republican Party. I wanted to know what he thought about that day’s latest scandal reports, the swirl of scandal surrounding his party’s President and Vice President, and what he thought about the general tar pit of scandal and corruption engulfing his party.

If he didn’t talk about any of that in his speech, I intended to ask him.

As it turned out, Ray did not mention either Nixon nor Agnew in his speech to the young Republicans, I thought that was odd, but understandable. It was likely for the same reason, according to the old saying, that one does not mention the word “rope” in certain households.

And in fairness to Ray, none of the young Republicans asked him anything about Nixon or Agnew either.

I caught up with the Governor as he exited the building and asked what he thought of that day’s scandal developments.

The Governor did not hesitate with his answer: “I don’t know, of course, if these latest reports are accurate,” he said, speaking directly and deliberately into my microphone. “But if they are true, then anyone who had anything to do with it ought get scalded. Immediately. Because there is no place for any of that in politics or government.”

I have never forgotten that answer. I think of it often today.

“Ought to get scalded” is pretty harsh talk for one politician to use about another - especially about a President or Vice President of their own party. But Ray did not flinch. He insisted on what was right - even if that meant crossing his party’s President or Vice President.

It was a remarkable display of integrity, character, and honesty, certainly by today’s Republican standards.

Fast forward to today, nearly 50 years later.

Donald Trump once famously bragged that he could literally “shoot somebody in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue” and his supporters would still support him. Most of us, at that time, thought - surely he doesn’t actually believe his supporters are that wacky, right?

It turns out he did, and for a very good reason: because many of them are that wacky.

It also turns out when he talked about supporters wacky enough to keep supporting him even if he gunned someone down in the middle of Fifth Avenue, he was talking about people like Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s two US Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, Iowa’s Republicans in Congress, a statehouse full of Republican elected officials, and a ballot full of Republican candidates across the state.

Donald Trump has been a perpetual motion, rolling, one man fraud and crime wave his entire adult life - never more so than during his presidency. None of Iowa’s top Republican leaders, however, have called him out for any of it, much less suggested he “ought to get scalded” for it.

Reynolds has become a Trump echo chamber.

There is some question about exactly what Grassley was willing to do as President Pro Tempore of the US Senate on January 6 to help Trump over throw a democratic election. Ernst regularly repeats debunked Republican talking point lies, and like Grassley, even voted to protect Trump from impeachment twice, including after Trump tried to overthrow the United States government.

This problem goes beyond Republican support for Donald Trump in the state. We have Republicans in Iowa who are now trying to make a career out of demonizing local school teachers, attacking local library boards, and regularly working to spread Trump’s “Big Lie.”

Not exactly “Bob Ray Republicans” are they?

They are “Big Lie” Republicans. They are demagogues. They are Republicans who see truth as only one item on a list of options to use to advance their ideology. Lies work just as well. Right and wrong are things determined by polls, and what works, not lasting values.

In 1896, newspaper publisher William Allen White published a famous editorial in his Emporia (KS) Gazette asking the question, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

The same question can be asked today about Iowa; “What’s the Matter With Iowa?”

How did Iowa change over the course of 50 years from a state that could repeatedly elect a leader of integrity and character like Robert D. Ray as its Governor - someone who was willing to call for a President and Vice President of his own party to “get scalded” if scandal reports proved true, to loading up with the likes of Reynolds, Grassley, Ernst and the passel of other Republicans who fail the test of leadership, character and integrity every day by continuing to openly align themselves with America’s first full time criminal President and insurrectionist?

The political leaders we elect in our time say a lot about who we are as a people.

Do Iowans really want Republican leaders taking the state down a path that increasingly rejects honesty and truth as a permanent standard; democracy as a form of government; and integrity as an absolute requirement for service in government?

Do Iowans truly want Republican leaders who increasingly put the state on a course that veers toward fascism, mob actions over elections, and elections that only count if their side wins?

I don’t think so.

The chance to change all this is on Election Day. Every day between now and Election Day would be a good day - in fact an urgent day - to work to change that course.

What’s the Matter With Iowa?

Republican leaders who have repeatedly failed the state with toxic leadership and are willing to sacrifice democracy itself for their own power and partisan agenda.