Kemp at the Crossroads

IT was ten in the morning off Route 35, the interstate that runs from Kansas City to Des Moines to Minneapolis. The temperature was zero, warmer than yesterday. Factory smoke over Ames, two miles off, stood like sculpture. The parking lot of the Starlight Village Restaurant was slick as glass. The sign read welcome/ JACK KEMP.

The event was a rally and pep talk for the Kemp organization of Story County. The Uncommitted were very much welcome. “I’m just checkin’ it out,” I overheard several times in the meeting room inside. After three straight elections marked by slavish political courtship and media attention, Iowa caucus voters are about as unsophisticated as John Sears. They clip their coupons and comparison-shop; if they don’t like what they see at Woolworth’s, they’ll go to Neisner’s. The Kemp people had set up piano, lectern, coffee and orange juice, and chairs for a hundred. When the chairs filled up, Starlight Village rolled back an accordion wall and set up a hundred more.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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IT was ten in the morning off Route 35, the interstate that runs from Kansas City to Des Moines to Minneapolis. The temperature was zero, warmer than yesterday. Factory smoke over Ames, two miles off, stood like sculpture. The parking lot of the Starlight Village Restaurant was slick as glass. The sign read welcome/ JACK KEMP.

The event was a rally and pep talk for the Kemp organization of Story County. The Uncommitted were very much welcome. “I’m just checkin’ it out,” I overheard several times in the meeting room inside. After three straight elections marked by slavish political courtship and media attention, Iowa caucus voters are about as unsophisticated as John Sears. They clip their coupons and comparison-shop; if they don’t like what they see at Woolworth’s, they’ll go to Neisner’s. The Kemp people had set up piano, lectern, coffee and orange juice, and chairs for a hundred. When the chairs filled up, Starlight Village rolled back an accordion wall and set up a hundred more.