Iowa

My two cents, for what it’s worth: I was happy to see more or less “anti-establishment” candidates win, continuing to undermine the “inevitability” theme that had been running through the campaign. Neither Huckabee nor Obama are my ideal candidate by any stretch, but I’d much rather see a match up between those two than, say, a Giuliani-Clinton race.

Huckabee continues to present an interesting challenge to conservative orthodoxy with his populist themes. I still don’t see these as translating into any very coherent policy positions, and I’m not sure I’d particularly like them if they did. But there’s something refreshing about his candidacy compared to the others. I still have a sneaking suspicion that the Republicans will work their way back to McCain before it’s all said and done, but then again, I also predicted that Al Gore would be the Democratic nominee.

I have so far been less impressed by Obama than some of my friends; his vaunted oratory which seemed to promise to magically transport us to a post-partisan, post-race, post-conflict happy land always struck me as so much hot air. I don’t need or want messianism from politicians. I’m also unsure about where exactly he stands on crucial issues, foreign policy in particular. That said, I’ve always found him preferable to Hillary Clinton, so I can’t be too unhappy about his win.