Iowa in August: bright blue sky, beautifully green farm fields, warm but (unlike some past Iowa straw poll years) not oppressively hot. On landing in Des Moines late this afternoon it seemed a good idea to make the rounds of some of the presidential candidates’ Iowa headquarters. The level of activity there is not necessarily a good index of how the candidates are doing, since Iowa is still an early-to-bed and early-to-rise state in which you don’t expect to find much political activity after 7pm, when I set out. As I mentioned in my Wednesday Examiner column, written before I set out, the campaigns this year are headquartered not in downtown Des Moines or on Ingersoll or Grand Avenues near the affluent neighborhood on the hills above the Racoon River, but out in the suburbs, amid shopping centers and near freeway interchanges. Iowa for all its farm heritage and 99 counties is increasingly a metropolitan state, and four years ago one-third of the votes in the Iowa precinct caucuses were cast in the eight counties including and around Des Moines. Some observations:

My first stop was Michele Bachmann’s headquarters, in a roadside mall centered around a Panera Bread with a Groucho’s and an Isla Cozumel. The receptionists have orders (as they do in many campaigns in recent years) to keep reporters out of the back rooms, but aide Doug Sachtleben showed me around and I chatted with deputy campaign manager Dave Polansky. There was a warren of rooms, with a couple of dozen volunteers busy making calls and two little boys rolling toy cars down a handicapped ramp. On one wall was a list of 40-some “pastor endorsements”—not up to date, I was told. “We’re looking good,” Sachtleben said, “there’s definitely a groundswell.” What’s striking here is that I was told the operation only began in the middle of June, after Bachmann’s well received performance in the New Hampshire debate.