Iowa in winter can be a lonely landscape--stark, frozen, and seemingly uninhabited. Yet in the months preceding the Iowa caucuses, inside countless diners and VFW halls, a second landscape emerges, one where the state?s provincial populace hobnobs with presidential contenders. There is a saying that nobody in Iowa decides whom they will vote for until they have had breakfast with him twice. Indeed, the caucuses create an unlikely privilege: the chance for a reserved, rural state to determine a presidential frontrunner.