Oyez Ioway

The words "Iowa" and "explore" are rarely used in the same sentence. But Michael Avenatti, the current public face of the California bar, just ventured among the stalks to explore his popularity with the corn shockers. He's eyeing Abe Lincoln's old job. If he attends the state fair, my advice is to avoid the corn dogs until after he's navigated the Tilt-A-Whirl. Ingratiating yourself to Iowa voters requires a knowledge of scripture (Moses tapped a rock and out flowed ethanol like milk and honey), a feigned familiarity with wrestling, and a facility for guessing weights in the livestock pen. Come to think of it, Abe was pretty good at the latter two.

Whatever Mike does, he should never assume his flyover country jury is made up of easy marks. Iowa has the highest literacy rate of any state.

The favorite song is "Iowa Where the Tall Corn Grows" but it's also where lots of yeoman folk in red "Make America Great Again" caps seeded their 40s with soybeans. When the Ag agents are handing out $14 billion worth of bailouts to soften the blow from Mr. Trump's trade war the dirty word "socialist" will ne'er be uttered.

Counselor Avenatti shares a good deal in common with a former president from the heartland. Like Dwight Eisenhower he sports a bald pate, a winning grin, and a twinkle in his eye. They also have remarkably similar life stories. At the world's moment of maximum peril Eisenhower forged and managed a delicate, yet mighty coalition to defeat an army that was the best equipped and best trained in the world, with a first class professional officer corps to boot. It was also under the command of a genocidal maniac who wasn't loathe to use it. Mike flies the banner of an over-the-hill strumpet who was hoodwinked by a sleazo, quisling, dumbbell into stuffing $150k into her decolletage. Mike and Ike: peas in a pod!

There is plenty of precedent for parlaying the lawyerly art into high office. A little known prairie lawyer captured the public imagination delivering an eloquent assault against slavery at The Cooper Union. Mike detailed a spanking on Morning Joe.

It was said of lawyer Franklin Pierce that "Eloquence was as natural to him as a song to the thrush." Benjamin Harrison argued more cases before the Supreme Court than any other president, and his record of accomplishment in front of juries earned him fees upward of $150,000 a year back in the days when you could buy Alaska for two cents an acre. Unfortunately, these skills did not translate into an ability to run the country. Pierce spent four years in his cups and Harrison almost got us into a war with Chile over guano.

Teddy Roosevelt, Warren Harding, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson were all legal dropouts, and FDR was a notorious under-achiever both at Columbia Law and in practice. Coolidge and Nixon each devoted less than a paragraph of their life stories to their legal careers, though had it known, Nixon's publisher would have insisted that he boost sales by retelling his experience defending an overzealous couple caught making whoopee in the park.

John W. Davis (Polk & Wardwell), Wendel Willkie (Farr & Gallagher) and Thomas E. Dewey (Ballantine) all got nominated, but stuck out, Tom twice, to Coolidge, FDR and Truman.

Maybe this time will be different. Avenatti's public presence as a trial lawyer fits the modern mold of a candidate, not because his lawyering has won him admirers, but because it has won him fans. And these days that is, woefully, what counts. Mr. Avenatti might well ride the crest of his newfound fame all the way to the big oval. Unless someone more qualified comes along: like the My Pillow guy.