On the trail in the Hawkeye State

By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff

A few observations while following Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani in Iowa:

1. Despite their staunch support of President Bush's troop "surge," the two rivals have different standards for when the United States should withdraw troops. Romney, campaigning in Davenport, said he would pull back forces once he was confident that Iraq would not become "a safe haven" for Al Qaeda. Giuliani, at a stop in Muscatine, said his bottom line would be "a stable Iraq that is an ally for us in the war against Islamic terrorists."

These standards are both subjective and would allow either Romney or Giuliani to keep the war going indefinitely to prevent Al Qaeda from gaining strength. But Romney's is a lower bar than Giuliani's. Romney doesn't make stability a precondition for the removal of US troops, and he doesn't require that the country be a US ally, only that it rejects Islamic terrorism.

There were other hints that Romney would be willing to withdraw troops more quickly than Guiliani. In answering a question from a voter, Romney said he believed the US could withdraw a brigade a month starting next year, with the approval of General David H. Petraeus. He sounded confident that the United States was on a path toward a steady drawdown of troops. Giuliani offered no such prediction, and gave a much more vigorous defense of the war from its inception.

While acknowledging that mistakes were made, Giuliani suggested that critics of the Bush administration have been way too harsh. "These things aren't tidy, they aren't neat," he said. He reiterated his strong support for the removal of Saddam Hussein, and predicted that if Hussein had not been "taken out," he would be in the midst of a nuclear arms race with Iran.

2. Romney's references to his family were a constant thread in his remarks, while Giuliani didn't mention a single relative. In a roughly half-hour appearance, Romney managed to work in his birthday present from his five boys, his father's tenure as head of American Motors, his father's three terms as governor of Michigan, his son Josh's journey by Winnebago -- with his wife and three kids -- to every county in Iowa, his wife Ann's famous meat loaf, his boys' teasing him about his lack of athletic prowess, the boys fighting at the dinner table over their favorite foods, and many more dispatches from the happy Romney home.

The audience in Davenport seemed to love the family talk, chuckling like friendly neighbors over a well-remembered episode of "Father Knows Best." Romney's personal anecdotes also dovetailed with his emphasis on building "strong families" and preventing single motherhood. (One cautionary note for the Romney campaign: Some undecided voters said privately after the event that they felt he was friendly but didn't offer enough specifics.)

Giuliani's audiences in Muscatine and Iowa City didn't seem to notice his lack of even the most perfunctory blandishments about wife and family. Speaking at colleges, Giuliani made no mention of having college-age kids of his own. Of course, those kids are famously estranged from him. And while his wife, Judith, is heavily involved in his campaign, she's the third Mrs. Giuliani and he's her third husband.

So it's fair to assume that Giuliani isn't talking about family values because he doesn't want anyone to think too hard about his own. This hasn't hampered him too much, so far, and Republican primary voters seem to accept him as a national-security candidate. He's also a warm presence on the stump, jocular and responsive to those around him, so his lack of personal conversation doesn't make him seem cold.

But in a general election campaign, Republicans rely on their family-values message to offset Democratic advantages on such family-friendly issues as healthcare and education. Giuliani doesn't seem comfortable yet delivering that message.

3. Both Republicans are emphasizing an anti-tax message, and getting a strongly positive response.

Most Democratic leaders have been cautious about raising taxes, limiting themselves to proposing that some of the Bush tax cuts be allowed to lapse when they reach their "sunset" provisions. But Romney and Giuliani ride right over those complexities and declare that Democrats are planning a massive tax hike. No voter at any of their events questioned that presumption.

More surprisingly, both candidates dwelled the longest, and drew the strongest response, to their condemnation of the "death tax." Neither mentioned that the inheritance tax applies only to estates above $2 million and, by 2009, will apply only to those above $3.5 million. If Bush's cuts aren't renewed, the estate-tax cutoff would revert back to $1 million in 2011. But leading Democrats have said they won't allow that to happen. Hillary Clinton, among others, has proposed a permanent cutoff of $3.5 million, which would enable couples who split their estates to protect $7 million.

Nonetheless, both Romney and Giuliani went further in their attacks on the Democratic "death tax" than any other levy, declaring it morally wrong to tax money that has already been subject to income taxes. Romney got one of his biggest ovations when he declared "Death to the death tax." Giuliani kept pointing at the audience and talking about how the death tax takes "your money."

Interviews after the Romney event confirmed that people in the audience didn't know that the inheritance tax only applies to multimillionaires. And Giuliani, whose personal worth is in the tens of millions, and Romney, whose fortune reaches the hundreds of millions, seemed far more likely to have their estates reduced by the inheritance tax than anyone in their audiences.

Nonetheless, the GOP presidential nominee seems certain to raise hay over the tax issue next year, and the response in Iowa suggests it has lost none of its power.