David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to President Obama, is one of two Davids who will be speaking this Sunday at Senator Tom Harkin’s annual “Steak Fry” in Indianola.  (The other David scheduled to be there is David Plouffe.)

Axelrod spoke, by phone, with Radio Iowa late this afternoon.  

Henderson: “Let’s talk about what’s happening on the ground in Iowa first.  Chet Culver is trailing.  Iowa’s three Democratic incumbent congressmen by no means have a cake-walk to November.  How and why have the fortunes of Iowa Democrats changed from 2008 to now?”

Axelrod:  “I’d say a few things about the governor’s race.  I can only tell you I’m a veteran of the Vilsack campaigns and in 1998, a little later than this in September, the headline in The Des Moines Register was ‘Experts: Vilsack has no chance’ and we were 20 points behind so I’m always reluctant to draw too many conclusions, but I also think it’s true that Iowa is not immune to the same forces that are animating politics everywhere. You know, we’ve had a difficult couple of years.  We inherited an unholy mess when we walked in the door and, more than us, the American people have been through a difficult couple of years after a decade in which most middle class people were treading water or falling behind so you know that puts pressure on the incumbent party.  We may not have created the mess, but, you know, we’re responsible for cleaning it up and while we’ve made some good progress from the time we arrived when the…last month of the Bush Administration we lost 800,000 jobs, we’ve had eight straight months of private sector job growth and we’re getting stronger but not fast enough for anyone’s liking, particularly when we lost eight million jobs during that recession and that has an impact and, you know, there’s no two ways about it.

“But ultimately these elections are about choices.  There’s not referendums on either a party or on the state of the economy, they’re a choice between candidates and governing philosophies and the Republican Party’s made it clear, the chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee said, ‘Our goal is to go back to the very same agenda we had before this president took office.’  The other day Mr. Boehner said, ‘Let’s go back to the 2008 Bush budget.’  They want to go back to the situation where interest groups, big corporate interest groups and Wall Street — essentially — got to regulate themselves and write their own rules and the kind of policies that caused the $237 billion surplus that Bill Clinton left to become a $1.3 trillion deficit that we were handed from George Bush — nobody wants to go back to those policies.

“And I think when people focus on the choice, then, you know, you’re going to be a little surprised at the result.  We Obama people, perhaps more than any, appreciate that the conventional wisdom is often wrong.”

Henderson: “You brought up Tom Vilsack.  If Mr. Emanuel leaves the White House to run for mayor, would Tom Vilsack made a good chief of staff?”

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