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Sat 11 Nov 2007Keeping calm in a dead heatEvery hand Barack Obama shakes in Iowa could be vital to his presidential hopes. Denis Stauntonjoins him on the stump.Barack Obama is winding up an hour-long meeting at an old freight house in Chariton, a small prairie town in south-west Iowa, when he looks out at the overwhelmingly rural, white crowd and tells them how lucky they are. "You will probably decide who the next president of the US is going to be," he says. "It's a pretty big responsibility." It's also the reason Obama has spent all day travelling in close to freezing temperatures through this sparse landscape of corn fields and hog farms to speak to small groups of likely voters.