Iowa Isn’t That Important, Clinton Staffers Say

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http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/01/04/iowa-isnt-that-important-clinton-staffers-say/

ON BOARD THE CLINTON PLANE — After pouring millions of dollars and nearly a year of effort into a win in Iowa, senior staffers for Democrat Hillary Clinton now say the state isn’t that important after all.

“The worst thing would be to over count Iowa and its importance,” said chief strategist Mark Penn, just hours after the New York senator finished in a disappointing third place, behind Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

“Iowa doesn’t have a record of picking presidents. We’re in a strong position to move forward,” Penn told a handful of reporters on board a chartered midnight flight that took Clinton staffers and such high-level supporters such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from Des Moines, Iowa, to Manchester, N.H.

That contradicts the huge gravitas Clinton put on the Iowa caucus in her recent stump speeches, evoking the process as a democratic gift in the wake of Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s death.

“The Iowa caucuses are such a unique part of American democracy. I am so impressed at how seriously everyone here in Iowa takes it,” she said at a recent event in Clarion. Iowans caucus for “our hopes and the possibilities America should have again.”