So you are the folks that get to choose my next President. Clean-living, middle-American corn shuckers. Refugees from a Grant Wood painting. Salt-of-the-earth types who got the privilege of shaking hands with a real-life Clinton, rubbing shoulders with Queen Oprah and Kung-Fuing with the likes of Chuck Norris. But next week, after this carnival sideshow subsides, you Iowans get to turn two presidential wannabes into bona fide front runners. And although another handful of primaries may upset your apple cart, how you good folks vote will dramatically affect where this whole thing shakes out and what man or woman gets a Pennsylvania Avenue address come November. So please look past who had the better brass band or which glad-hander snubbed you at the local greasy spoon; put your thinking caps on and choose us someone with something more than charisma and pretty promises. Give us someone substantial––someone with those midwestern qualities that it doesn’t take a wizard to dispense: a heart, a brain and a modicum of courage. Those are three things that could serve our country well.