Hey, Jim.

What's up?

It's been a while since I've talked to Slate's Jim Newell.

What's up with you?

Just coming back from the heartland.

Usually, Jim covers what's happening in Washington.

But these days, what's happening in Washington is actually happening in Iowa.

So Jim just got back from the Iowa State Fair,

an event that's become pretty much a must-do for any presidential contender.

When Jim thinks about the absurdity of this event,

he gets this one image in his head.

I would say the image is of Corey Booker getting onto the Ferris wheel and a bunch of photographers and video people racing to get in front of him in line so that they could have the Ferris wheel cars next to him.

So that they could take photos of him on the Ferris wheel.

From the Ferris wheel.

From the Ferris wheel, yeah.

It was just a big creative photo op, essentially.

Someone like Cory Booker, though, he makes this multi-day photo op look easy.

After biting into a deep-fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he knew just what to say. It was a little slice of heaven.

You know, they tried to eat junk food or whatever. They try to eat a corn dog or cotton candy or fried whatever on a stick. And they try to make it look like they, you know,

actually want that or doing it spontaneously. But there's a lot of preparation that goes in from the campaign team, at least with some of the candidates, about, all right, what food

are we going to eat at the fair? You know, like, we do this, we do that. You know, the question

always when eating a corn dog is, is getting photoed eating a corn dog the most flattering photo, too?

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