New Sing-Along in Iowa

If you believe the polls, voters are changing their tune in the first bellwether state for '08, putting Barack Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton and reversing their desire for experience over change.

Fifty-five percent say that a "new direction and new ideas" are their top priority, compared with 33 percent who favor "strength and experience," a shift from July, when 49 percent wanted change and 39 percent experience.

Their lyrics may come straight from Bob Dylan's "Blowing' in the Wind" of the 1960s:

"Come writers and critics/Who prophesize with your pen/And keep your eyes wide/The chance won't come again/And don't speak too soon/For the wheel's still in spin/And there's no tellin' who/That it's namin'./For the loser now/Will be later to win/For the times they are a-changin'."

On the Republican side, the wheel is turning toward Mike Huckabee catching up to Mitt Romney, both of them well ahead of Rudy Giuliani fighting Fred Thompson for third place.

All this can be summed up by a still earlier song about the contrariness of Iowans from "The Music Man":

“And we're so by God stubborn/We can stand touchin' noses/For a week at a time/And never see eye-to-eye.”