Yepsen: Comedian or Republican Staffer?

Yepsen: Comedian or Republican Staffer?

I thought last week's Roy Nielsen (the independent against Steve King) has a chance column was just color and flavor. But this makes it official. David Yepsen has gone completely around the bend:

Write-in Tom Vilsack. That's right. Let's keep the governor we've got. Draft Vilsack.

He squeezes a gratuitous Iowa City slam in, too.

I almost decided not to publicize this crap by writing about it, but in the end my Yepsen contempt - this is the man who singlehandedly led me to quit a promising career in journalism - outweighed my Democratic strategy inner filter.

Inside each party, there's a tangible lack of excitement about each candidate. Some social conservatives and those on the far right are still troubled about Nussle's divorce and his plans to spend a lot more state money on things like higher teacher salaries.

(He's actually promising higher ones than Culver, a sign Nussle's still got the vote-buying addictions common in Washington.) And GOP moderates - what few that remain - don't like his hard-line stance on abortion.

On the Democratic side, most activists wanted someone besides Culver in the primary. The far left isn't happy that he'd sign a death penalty. And the public-employee unions think he wants to tinker with the IPERS pension system. He can't give a policy speech on his own; he has to read them so he doesn't make mistakes or talk too long.

So Yepsen is bored. But that's hardly insight worthy of recurring "Hardball" guest slots every four years. Why do national people even listen to this guy at caucus time? Any fifth grader in the state could sum up the race as Nussle Hustle vs. Chet Not Dumb.

Nussle's divorce is ancient history. The Dems had their shot in 1996 when it was fresh and when we had a good year - and we blew it with a weak candidate who still almost pulled it off. And the vintage 1991 bag on the head bit is a cute trick for rallying the Democratic troops, but no one under about my age (42) really remembers political events from that era much beyond the fall of the Soviet Union and "read my lips."

As for Chet, the recent Democratic events I've been at are talking trifecta, trifecta, trifecta - that elusive combination of governorship, House and Senate that Democrats last had in 1965-66 - the Harold Hughes era after the LBJ landslide. The implication seems to be: OK, maybe Chet's not the sharpest tool in the shed. But Mike Gronstal and Pat Murphy are smart enough to run the show: sign here, Governor.

And I can live with that. Ed Fallon would have been exciting. Mike Blouin would have been an interesting curveball and more interesting for a political columnist to write about. But the voters had their say and they decided to vote the name you know. And David Yepsen is grumpy about that.

For the sake or argument, let's pretend to take "draft Vilsack" seriously. What if Vilsack HAD run again?

Democrats pleaded, begged, screamed at Vilsack to give it another go. He had his chance.

Vilsack has his sights set - unrealistically - on bigger things.

If he HAD decided to run for a third term Yepsen would certainly have written a "Vilsack violates term limits pledge" rant.

More to the point: who does this help? The old time pols used to run no-chance candidates to split the vote. Tip O'Neill wrote about it: you're an Irish guy running against an Italian, you get some other Italian with a similar sounding name into the race to confuse people. (The Bay State even elected one of these buffoons state treasurer in the 50's, because he happened to have the name John F. Kennedy.)

This is a little different, but who is more likely to write in Tom Vilsack: a moderate Republican or a disgruntled Democrat? With the polls tied 44-44, with the state decided by 4000 votes in the 2000 presidential, even a tiny handful of votes wasted on an incumbent who doesn't want the job anymore could be decisive. I read the article three times scanning it for a "Paid For By Nussle For Governor" disclaimer - he couldn't BUY a story this beneficial.

I's suggest a nice little joint appearance with each man in character: Culver laughs it off, Vilsack looks serious, makes a Sherman statement and re-endorses Chet.