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Campaign Crawlers

GRINNELL, Iowa -- Chris Dodd understood the thirty people gathered before him in the Forum South Lounge of Grinnell College better than they understood themselves -- and he wasn't shy about saying so.

"For those of you who don't know me maybe only seen my picture on television or heard my voice, you've been asking two questions since the moment I walked into this room," Dodd said. "And they're very difficult questions to ask, so I'll ask them for you."

No one can say the senior senator isn't bold or innovative. Usually politicians take questions from the audience and then shoehorn a preferred soundbite into the answer. Here was a man unafraid to streamline the process, to ask and answer his own questions.

"The first question is 'Who am I?'" Dodd began. The room was silent save for some uncomfortable shuffling, a typical reaction to the threat of late afternoon existentialism. Dodd quickly corrected his question to more accurately mimic an audience member: "'Who is this guy standing in front of me?'" Better. "I don't mean in the sense of I haven't read enough about you" -- wait, have we not read enough about him or has he not read enough about us? -- "or because the national media may not have paid enough attention."

Dodd said this last in a way that left little doubt as to whether, by his lights, the media has paid enough attention. "I think we're far more than our resumes. We could all give our CVs and mark dates in our lives...but I think you should be asking a far deeper question than what my resume is."

Things were unraveling here quickly. Dodd was criticizing as too shallow a query he had made on our behalf and without our input. How long would it be before he began bickering with himself in two voices and slapping himself in the face?

"Who am I?" he continued, shifting back to his own point of view. "Where do I come from? What are my values and character? What's my DNA?" The senator paused, as if waiting for someone to take a saliva swab and run it over to the lab for analysis, then offered his particulars: His father prosecuted the KKK and the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. His sisters taught. He himself served in the Peace Corps, the Army National Guard and both houses of Congress. Public service, he said, ran through his veins.

Now that we had settled who he was, Dodd divined from the ethers the second question too difficult for his audience to pose itself: "Do I have any idea who you are?" Well, judging by the first question, probably not. Sometimes, though, when an earnest child does a magic routine, you just humor the kid and tell him he picked the card you were thinking of.

"That might be the most important question the electorate ever asks," Dodd mused, unabated. "I'm always stunned at the number of people who run for public office and think the elections are about them and not about the people they seek to represent."

Yes, how do people get that impression. Could it be that certain -- cough, cough -- politicians spend a great deal of time answering questions they ask themselves on behalf of the audience?

"We'd like to know where you stand on various issues," he continued, adopting the persona of the audience again momentarily. "But there are more profound and deeper questions than that. Do you know who I am? Do I know who you are?"

The lines of perspective blurred as Dodd moved, rhetorically, in and out of our heads. He assured us, nevertheless, that the answer was an affirmative on both counts. We knew him. He knew us. And now that that was settled, Dodd opened the floor up to questions not channeled through him.

"Will I ever be able to afford a hybrid," the first inquisitor asked. "I'd like to support the environment."

Ugh. On second thought can we just scratch this and let Dodd ask another question for us?

IT'S NO MYSTERY WHY Chris Dodd is seeking to assert more control over this process. Thus far, the nomination fight has not had much of an upside for him, aside from some Daily Kos kudos and a firefighter union endorsement.

topics:
Joe Biden, Television, Environment, Law, NATO, Africa