Did we really just live through the fever dream of the Iowa caucuses, an Artic blast, and a winter’s worth of snow dumped within a week?

“Fever” may be the wrong word considering the Iowa weather, but you get my drift.

Did the presidential campaigns and their allies really spend $123 million on the race—in other words, $1,115 for each of the 110, 298 registered Iowa Republicans who trudged to precincts in subzero temps?

Did Donald Trump really win bigly despite shunning the debate stage and infrequently setting foot in the Hawkeye state? Not only did Trump not attempt the ritual “full Grassley” 99-county tour of retail politics, he barely racked up more appearances than the number of letters in Sen. Charles Ernest Grassley’s full name.

Nikki Haley campaigns Jan. 16 at Drake Diner in Des Moines—the morning of the Iowa caucuses.

Yet Trump won every county except the university-town liberal bastion of Johnson County, which he lost to Nikki Haley by a single vote.

I wasn’t covering the caucuses this time around, but the persistent drumbeat of horserace headlines and attack ads conjured my shoe-leather-journalism nostalgia for watching Republicans toss slips of paper into 5-gallon buckets, or witnessing a throng of Obama supporters chant “Fired up, ready to go!” while lined up and shivering in a snowdrift.

I may never be able to wipe the image from my mind of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis licking his lips in slow motion as one of this cycle’s most pervasive unflattering video images endlessly replayed in grainy black and white.

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I’ve always wanted to believe that we Iowans take our civic duty seriously on behalf of vetting candidates for the national electorate. But this race seemed like a more modest tour of duty.

Raygun owner Mike Draper on C-SPAN referred to these caucuses as a “sad, sparsely attended circus” and a race bogged down by incumbents in both major parties (not to mention the dethronement of the caucuses from first place on the Democratic side).

Draper also told Axios Des Moines that his caucuses T-shirt and merch revenue rated a meager 10% of 2020 sales. That same news story cited the local convention bureau’s estimate of $4.2 million in direct economic impact of the caucuses—less than half its initial estimate last year.

I did my part and contributed to the economic impact of at least two caucuses-themed restaurant meals.

The first was a delightful late lunch Sunday at Vietnamese cuisine standout A Dong in Des Moines, where I joined my friend David Skidmore, a political science professor at Drake University. He played gracious political tour guide to a pair of esteemed friends and fellow academics from China: Ren Junfeng, a political science professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, and Wang Bo, an associate professor and deputy director at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

From left, taking a break from shivering: some guy with a Substack newsletter, Wang Bo, David Skidmore, and Ren Junfeng.

The trio attended the Trump rally Jan. 14 at Simpson College in Indianola, where temperatures plunged to more than 10 degree below zero. Skidmore said that for the first time he felt the early painful tingle of encroaching frostbite in his feet.

I told him that wouldn’t be a story he’d enjoy repeating for the rest of his life.

“How did you lose your toes, David?”

“Well, to be honest, I was standing in line to see Donald Trump.”

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I listened to some of Trump’s speech on C-SPAN—so I could have an informed conversation over my curry—and couldn’t help but feel like I had been swept through a time vortex back to 2016. Trump remains the unhinged jazz soloist of politics—forever riffing at random and turning every wrong note into his next dissonant melody. At one point Trump somehow fumbled his way into imagining what it would be like if notorious gangster Al Capone wanted to knock off Iowa wrestling legend Dan Gable, who was in the crowd. Trump also recited the lyrics to the song “The Snake,” one of his old standbys of misappropriation to rile up the base over immigration.

No shame, no nuance. All bravado and volume. We’re still figuring out how to handle this style of politics in the information age.

My other restaurant meal was the morning of the caucuses, when my wife and I sat down for breakfast at Drake Diner, surrounded by a swarm of Haley supporters and journalists. It was a whirlwind appearance—a quick interview with Fox News and her prod to the hashbrown electorate to defy the frigid weather and get out the vote.

The cameras and boom microphones prevented me from reaching the hot sauce for my veggie omelet, but I made do.

The night of the caucuses didn’t necessarily surprise based on the polling, but it still felt surreal.

The Associated Press called the race for Trump at around 7:30 p.m.—before many Iowans had cast their ballots.

When Trump took the stage to declare victory, he singled out supporter Brenna Bird, Iowa attorney general, as perhaps our state’s next governor—a not-so-subtle dig at Gov. Kim Reynolds, who had endorsed DeSantis. Around the same time, HBO’s “Succession” was winning the Emmy for top TV drama series.

Which is reality, which is theater in modern life and political power games? That has been harder to discern for at least the last eight years.

Yet the stakes are high in 2024.

Remember that the 2020 election was legitimate based on all available evidence. That includes my personal experience that fall as a poll worker. I was impressed with the precision of our voting technology and the diligence of our election officials.

Remember that the Capitol Riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was an abomination. There’s no way to excuse an insurrection or all the partisan denial and spin in its wake.

Remember relevant quotes from throughout American history:

There’s the famous quip attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, saying that American citizens had been given “a republic, if you can keep it.”