On the last night of my holiday trip to my hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I asked my parents to take the long way to our dinner. I wanted to see first-hand those parts of the city still devastated by the historic flood of June 2008. In Washington, DC, where I now live, talk about Iowa revolves around the churning machinery for the GOP presidential nomination and the Iowa caucuses that kick off that national process. A list of 50 influential Iowa Republicans recently generated a fair amount of chatter; a Sarah Palin book tour stop on the Western side of the state generated another round of “will she run?” prognosticating; road-weary reporters and campaign operatives dissect new restaurants in the Des Moines area. That is the Iowa of the national political conversation. But it is not the Iowa I saw.