BEWARE THE WRATH OF THE BUTTER COW

With the Democrats shunning an Iowa tradition, the two parties appear to be running for president of entirely different countries. Is one of them tempting fate?

- CHARLES P. PIERCE

IN 1911, A GUY NAMED J. K. DANIELS sculpted a cow out of butter and sent it along to the annual Iowa State Fair. To this day, about 600 pounds of butter is spread upon a wood-and-metal frame in a refrigeration unit kept at a steady 40 degrees. After the fair, they turn up the heat, and when the butter is soft enough to be removed, they collect it in five-gallon buckets and use it again the following year. The butter cow is eternal.

Over time, the cow was joined by a cast of supporting butter sculptures. Down through the years, these have included a Butter American Gothic, a Butter Abraham Lincoln, and a Butter Starship Enterprise. In 1999, the fair featured a Butter Last Supper. But it is the Butter Cow that has the dark powers. Everybody agrees. In their hubris, the Democrats risk the eternal wrath of the Butter Cow.

Every four years, it has become customary for presidential candidates of both parties to attend the Iowa State Fair as part of their campaign to win and/or survive the lowa caucuses, a nominating mechanism so preposterously arcane that even when it awarded the win to Pete Buttigieg in 2020, a considerable chunk of the population didn't believe it. In 2012, Mitt Romney was the unofficial winner for two weeks, until the state party reversed itself and gave the victory to Rick Santorum. It can be said that there never has been a real winner to this day.

At the fair, they stand behind a bunch of hay bales outside the pavilion in which the Butter Cow is kept, and they talk to a crowd of beer-drinking farmers and sunburnt children and a huge, unruly scrum of reporters and camera crews.