Melinda Henneberger

Opinion columnist

ANKENY, Iowa — Flight attendant Jason Kueper is for Joe Biden because he’s so tired of having to separate all the seatmates who get into political arguments on his flights, and he thinks President Joe would lower the temperature: “He could literally bring the country back together. We’ve had enough reality TV.”

Amber Frazier, who has a son with special needs, has been inflamed by the pleasure the current president seems to take in making fun of people with disabilities. To her, the former vice president is the obvious analgesic: “Joe is not that kind of person. I want better for my kids, and he treats everyone with dignity.”

Amanda Linton is pro-Joe because his Violence Against Women Act “saved my life, so this is personal. For me, character matters.”

Joe Biden is running on bringing decency back — which did work for Jimmy Carter, in Iowa and beyond, post-Watergate — so of course Biden supporters I met at Democratic presidential campaign events were focused on that, too.

In search of good character

Kueper, Frazier and Linton met online and decided to travel here at their own expense from their homes in California, Missouri and Virginia to spend the week stumping for Biden ahead of Monday’s Democratic caucuses. Over and over, Iowans in Biden’s corner also told me they see character as the most important issue of all.

“He’s the only candidate who the moment he’s sworn into office, the rest of the world will once again hold us in high esteem,” says Des Moines math consultant Larry Osthus. “I think he’s actually going to get the country to settle down and start treating each other better.”

"I look at him as the fixer," says retired teacher Lori DeBoer. Not in the same sense as Michael Cohen or Rudy Giuliani, but someone who “can fix things and get character back. I just want normal! I want to turn on the TV and not say, 'OH MY GOD!' "

As has been noted a few thousand times, Democrats are seriously divided over whether normal is a good thing and whether we ought to settle down. But in a couple of days of interviews here, in conversations not just with Biden supporters but also fans of former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, they talked even more about character than they did about health care, the climate crisis or guns.

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These Democrats are obviously different in background and presentation. Warren is so high-energy she seems to have been shot out of a cannon, doing a high kick alongside Jonathan Van Ness of "Queer Eye," while low-key, polished-to-a-shine Buttigieg strikes me as someone whose childhood friends had to constantly hear from their parents, “Why can’t you be more like Pete?” Yet the yearnings of their voters are close cousins.

“I can tell she cares about all classes of people” and will fight for fairness, Jenness Asby, who is a professional photographer in Cedar Rapids, says of Warren. To her, it’s the senator’s “earnestness” that sets her apart.

“I want someone who can pass a civics test, a drug test and if I don’t watch the news, it’s not an existential threat,” says newly convinced Buttigieg supporter Matt Ehn, a handyman in Webster City who voted Republican before Donald Trump.

Policy drives Sanders voters

Sen. Bernie Sanders' supporters, as you may have noticed, do not tend to talk like that. When they extol their chosen candidate’s personal qualities at all, it’s Sanders’ consistency on policy or his energy in pushing for policy that they mention. For them, the proof of character is in the policy.

“Mostly, it’s his universal health care plan” that sold her on Sanders four years ago, says Kathy Josephson, an Albert City farmer in a “Talk Bernie to Me” sweatshirt. “And we want free trade back” after “the worst year we’ve ever had.”

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The candidate whose character Bernie supporters are more likely to mention is Biden’s, and not in a good way. “He’s a Democratic version of Trump,” in the way he has changed his opinions over the years, says Josephson.

And she does question the righteousness of those who do not see Bernie as the next president. “The only ones he’s not going to win over,” she says, “are the ones who don’t care about their fellow man.”

Maybe the divide among Democrats isn’t so much between center and left or back to normal versus blow it up, as Trump supporters used to say. Maybe, and I say this as a mother proud of her fellow-man-loving son who is stumping for Bernie, the relevant divide is between those who still believe in consensus as a goal, passé as it is right now, versus those who think there’s no need for comity and compromise when you have a lock on the truth.

Melinda Henneberger is an editorial writer and columnist for The Kansas City Star and a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaKCMO