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Along I-35, Even the Cornfields Disagree
By CHARLES BAXTER
Published: November 1, 2004
Minneapolis
On a recent trip to New York, I was explaining what it's been like to live in Minnesota these past few months. "We're in siege mode," I said.
Political ads blanket the airwaves day and night. Battles are staged with lawn signs. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, the progressive tradition still has a foothold, and you see block after block of John Kerry signs, with a scattered few for President Bush. Some are homemade. Rage has effected a heightening of diction in the hope of eloquence. "KERRY BURY BUSH!" one reads, and, just underneath, "End his execrable abominations." Another, just across the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, announces "Bush Is a Big Fat Liar," but in true Midwestern style is decorated with multicolored flowers.
Progressives in Minnesota have still not recovered from Senator Paul Wellstone's death in a plane crash in 2002 during his re-election campaign. Then, the ubiquitous green "Wellstone!" bumper stickers and lawn signs defiantly stayed up long after Norm Coleman, a Republican, was elected. Mr. Wellstone's memory remains sacred to Democrats and supports a grievance in the presidential campaign - "What Would Wellstone Do?" signs are everywhere.
The division between the state's traditional Democratic Farmer-Labor progressives and its new radical conservatives is so wide that one liberal friend refers to the Minneapolis suburbs as "enemy country." At dinner parties, our guests promise that they won't talk about the presidential campaign, and then helplessly return to it. One acquaintance says that he thinks about the state's politics constantly and has concerns about his own emotional health. "I've become a maniac," he says quietly. "It's like the beginning of a civil war."
The political center here shifted drastically between when I left Minnesota 30 years ago and when I returned last year. Elmer L. Andersen, the state's Republican governor from 1961 to 1963, now 95, his faculties still very much intact, eloquently endorsed the Kerry-Edwards ticket in The Minneapolis Star Tribune. He was promptly denounced by current state Republicans as out of step.
Not to be outdone, a better-known former governor, Jesse Ventura, appeared at a news conference in St. Paul wearing a Navy Seals cap, a new beard and a sport shirt. Looking like the subject of a Ralph Steadman cartoon, he stood alongside Angus King, a former governor of Maine, and nodded while Mr. King endorsed John Kerry. Mr. Ventura himself remained mute before getting into his Porsche and driving away.
As I drive on I-35 from Minnesota to Iowa, I pass one partisan cornfield after another, this one fronting Bush signs, that one lauding Mr. Kerry. In fact, you are not safe from politics anywhere. In dog obedience class, our keeshond has been sporting a "K-9's for Kerry'' kerchief. A lady with a King Charles spaniel approached my wife a week ago and said, "John Kerry is not fit to rule!" My wife, a stickler for usage, asked, "Don't you mean govern?" But by then the lady had turned on her heel and walked away.
Charles Baxter is the author, most recently, of the novel "Saul and Patsy.''
I am almost tired of living here. I refer back to my rant at one radical policitian type during the caucuses. I hate the caucuses because it is one time that suddenly everyone cares about Iowa. No one cares about what Iowas think or feel any other time except the caucus and the election. When I start to hear politicans talk about Iowa problems then I will start to care because honestly, I feel more pride about being an Iowan than being an American. I identify myself more with this state I live in that this country I roll my eyes at. That is the status of american politics.
Along I-35, Even the Cornfields Disagree
By CHARLES BAXTER
Published: November 1, 2004
Minneapolis
On a recent trip to New York, I was explaining what it's been like to live in Minnesota these past few months. "We're in siege mode," I said.
Political ads blanket the airwaves day and night. Battles are staged with lawn signs. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, the progressive tradition still has a foothold, and you see block after block of John Kerry signs, with a scattered few for President Bush. Some are homemade. Rage has effected a heightening of diction in the hope of eloquence. "KERRY BURY BUSH!" one reads, and, just underneath, "End his execrable abominations." Another, just across the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, announces "Bush Is a Big Fat Liar," but in true Midwestern style is decorated with multicolored flowers.
Progressives in Minnesota have still not recovered from Senator Paul Wellstone's death in a plane crash in 2002 during his re-election campaign. Then, the ubiquitous green "Wellstone!" bumper stickers and lawn signs defiantly stayed up long after Norm Coleman, a Republican, was elected. Mr. Wellstone's memory remains sacred to Democrats and supports a grievance in the presidential campaign - "What Would Wellstone Do?" signs are everywhere.
The division between the state's traditional Democratic Farmer-Labor progressives and its new radical conservatives is so wide that one liberal friend refers to the Minneapolis suburbs as "enemy country." At dinner parties, our guests promise that they won't talk about the presidential campaign, and then helplessly return to it. One acquaintance says that he thinks about the state's politics constantly and has concerns about his own emotional health. "I've become a maniac," he says quietly. "It's like the beginning of a civil war."
The political center here shifted drastically between when I left Minnesota 30 years ago and when I returned last year. Elmer L. Andersen, the state's Republican governor from 1961 to 1963, now 95, his faculties still very much intact, eloquently endorsed the Kerry-Edwards ticket in The Minneapolis Star Tribune. He was promptly denounced by current state Republicans as out of step.
Not to be outdone, a better-known former governor, Jesse Ventura, appeared at a news conference in St. Paul wearing a Navy Seals cap, a new beard and a sport shirt. Looking like the subject of a Ralph Steadman cartoon, he stood alongside Angus King, a former governor of Maine, and nodded while Mr. King endorsed John Kerry. Mr. Ventura himself remained mute before getting into his Porsche and driving away.
As I drive on I-35 from Minnesota to Iowa, I pass one partisan cornfield after another, this one fronting Bush signs, that one lauding Mr. Kerry. In fact, you are not safe from politics anywhere. In dog obedience class, our keeshond has been sporting a "K-9's for Kerry'' kerchief. A lady with a King Charles spaniel approached my wife a week ago and said, "John Kerry is not fit to rule!" My wife, a stickler for usage, asked, "Don't you mean govern?" But by then the lady had turned on her heel and walked away.
Charles Baxter is the author, most recently, of the novel "Saul and Patsy.''
I am almost tired of living here. I refer back to my rant at one radical policitian type during the caucuses. I hate the caucuses because it is one time that suddenly everyone cares about Iowa. No one cares about what Iowas think or feel any other time except the caucus and the election. When I start to hear politicans talk about Iowa problems then I will start to care because honestly, I feel more pride about being an Iowan than being an American. I identify myself more with this state I live in that this country I roll my eyes at. That is the status of american politics.