{"id":9505,"date":"2017-12-30T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=9505"},"modified":"2017-12-26T23:18:32","modified_gmt":"2017-12-27T05:18:32","slug":"three-days-five-candidates-five-counties-ten-years-later-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2017\/12\/three-days-five-candidates-five-counties-ten-years-later-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Three days, five candidates, five counties, ten years later &#8211; 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/CandClinton1.jpg\" \/><em><strong>December 30, 2007:<\/strong>\u00a0Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Vilsack at the Traer Memorial Building. It&#8217;s weird to attend a political event when people you know are in the audience.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>After Christmas, Hillary Clinton was in a flat-out sprint toward Jan. 3. Events were announced maybe 48 hours in advance. Among the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/p2008.org\/ia08\/iavclinton.html\">five(!) events set up for Dec. 30<\/a>\u00a0was a stop at the Traer Memorial Building. This was her &#8220;Tama County Picks a President&#8221; stop and I had to be there. It&#8217;s not every day a candidate visits your home town \u2014 although in Iowa, of course, the chances are better than the rest of the country.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Clinton had only begun hitting the campaign trail herself\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com\/2007\/12\/08\/chelseas-iowa-debut\/\">at the beginning of the month<\/a>. She was there with former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who gave a speech beforehand (and also stalled since Clinton was late). Clinton arrived to enthusiastic cheers \u2014 Tama County had voted Democratic the last five presidential elections \u2014 and gave a wide-ranging, but well-practiced, stump speech.<\/p>\n<p>After you see enough of these, you understand why candidates have talking points \u2014 they have to be repeated often and one slip-up earns exactly the coverage you don&#8217;t want.<\/p>\n<p>Because this was the final countdown, national media turned up in Traer in force, and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/photos\/traer-iowa?mediatype=photography&amp;phrase=traer%20iowa&amp;sort=mostpopular\">OMG I look hideous<\/a>. <em>(So, the usual. \u2014 Ed.) <\/em>This would be the last campaign cycle where the vast majority of pictures were taken with cameras instead of phones.<\/p>\n<p>Clinton was the second presidential candidate to appear in Traer, about 20 years and a month after the first.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9512\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/GHWB_MemBldg.jpg\" width=\"420\" height=\"478\" srcset=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/GHWB_MemBldg.jpg 420w, http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/GHWB_MemBldg-263x300.jpg 263w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" \/><br \/>\n<em><strong>December 5, 1987:\u00a0<\/strong>Vice President George H.W. Bush (right) at the Traer Memorial Building. Family archive photo.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December 30, 2007:\u00a0Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Vilsack at the Traer Memorial Building. It&#8217;s weird to attend a political event when people you know are in the audience. After Christmas, Hillary Clinton was in a flat-out sprint toward Jan. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2017\/12\/three-days-five-candidates-five-counties-ten-years-later-2\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9505"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9519,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9505\/revisions\/9519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}