Under the Microscope

Three Presidential Candidates in New Hampshire, 2008

First of all, a word about New Hampshire: I'm not one of those Live-Free-Or-Die types who believes that New Hampshire has a God-given right to host the first primary every four years &, with Iowa, act as the nation's gatekeeper for presidential candidates. The whole system is ridiculous -- the money, the ads, the polls, the bullshit. But of course the fact is that the Constitution, in its attempt to create from whole cloth a perfectly rational system of democratic, republican national governance, neglected to create a rational system of electing our governors (by which I mean any & all of our leaders). Apparently the Founders thought that the only possible point of contention about this would hinge upon the rivalries of large vs. small states, so they "resolved" the matter by means of the Electoral College. And then mere mortals got involved & the whole thing's been a fucked-up mess ever since, worse every time. Yes: I agree that it's crazy for New Hampshire & Iowa to have a lock on the attention of all the candidates for the first year-plus of the campaign, it's not "fair" ... but the rebuttals are also persuasive (that no system could possibly be "fair" anyhow, that NH & IA take this business very, very seriously, & that their smallness is, in this instance a great virtue, forcing on the candidates a somewhat-more-authentic-than-TV "retail politics" than would be possible in, say, California or, God help us, Texas).

In any case, I'm sure that the other states won't put up with it any longer -- so I'm grateful to the fates that I moved to New Hampshire in time for this one last (?) waltz around the dance floor of New Hampshire's First-in-the-Nation Presidential Primary. The stereotypical yankee type, the laconic, skeptical, ornery cuss, is pretty well suited to demanding more from the campaigns than the shitstream of banality & vapidity that are the electoral norm in this country. The local NPR affiliate, NHPR, has supersaturated us with election info for over a year now -- not just the bumper-sticker level stuff, but the "deep code" of the candidate's positions, plans, histories. People here are really into it, very sophisticated about evaluating politicians. (Which is not at all to say enlightened, only to say that when New Hampshirites vote stupidly, at least they do it with sophistication.) So unlike, say, those Huckabee rallies in Iowa where people come close to prematurely rapturing even before Huck gets a word out his his mouth, in New Hampshire people listen politely, clap a bit at things they like, & sit in stony silence during the meaningless drivel intended for a national audience.

I've been to three rallies since last summer. The first was for Barack Obama at a farm near Peterborough (about 9 miles from here). I brought my dog along & as we were filing into the field, past the sign-up sheets, one of the Obamians pointed to Trooper & asked, "Oh, is he for Obama too?" "He's the only black Lab in the race," I said. There were a few people there with buttons & signs & stickers, but for the most part I had a sense that people were still at the window-shopping stage. (Most New Hampshirites see no rational reason for committing to one candidate or another before election day itself, & guard their preferences like they guard their PINs.) The "warm-up act" was reasonably, mercifully brief, just a short introduction of Obama by the farm-owner. Then Obama came, only a few minutes late to accommodate late-comers without pissing everybody else off. In his open shirt & tailored slacks he might have been on his way to a disco, & that was fine. He was loose, bouncy -- this guy really loves politicking, & he's damn good at it. He comes across as smart & kind & honorable & funny; he gets people nodding along, laughing. There was certainly nothing he said that I disagree with -- nothing that anyone even a bit left of center could disagree with. A lot of this kind of thing: "The American people are not the problem; the American people are the solution." He tried, with only partial success, to get a church- or stadium-style call & response thing going with alternating choruses of "Ready to go!" & what I heard as "Fire it up!" Yeah! I was about ready to fire one up right there & then! (I was very disappointed when, later that very day, I found an article in Slate that described an Obama rally & revealed that what he was really shouting was "Fired up!") All in all, he got a good reception but I never felt what I imagine to be the electricity of a campaign that's really on a roll, a campaign that's winning. I'm sure I wasn't the only person there who thought that Obama was getting an early, early start on 2012 or 2016. (Mind you, this was rural New Hampshire on a gorgeous, languid late-summer day in September. By the time you read this, if Obama has just won in Iowa, his rallies will be completely nutso.)

The second "event" I attended was for John Edwards, held in Peterborough Town Hall, an 1850-ish auditorium perfectly designed for just his sort of thing. There's a little stage on one end (for contra dance bands); chairs were set up there as well as the main floor, leaving a small theater-in-the-round. After an intro so short that I can't recall anything about it, Edwards came on, looking exactly like Edwards, big smile, perfect hair, sleeves rolled up, ah-shucks body language. First he did a little family shtick -- his kids came out with him, dressed up in their Halloween costumes as a ballerina (the little girl) & a Roman legionnaire (the little boy), & then they scampered off to go trick-or-treating as the audience chuckled & said Awww. Then Edwards did his bit, no notes, a lot of it populist this&that aimed vaguely at the GOP ("I don't believe in the genetic lottery"), a lot of it veiled or not-veiled attacks on Hillary Clinton (she of the "special interests"). I had a very mixed reaction, probably representative of the crowd: on the one hand, here was a very smart, sincere, focused guy, who just happens to have, hands down (as of late October), the most perfectly detailed set of proposals with which I can find no fault whatever ... & on the other hand, he had certain rhetorical ticks that were driving me crazy. First, he seemed to have been coached, maybe by some consultant, maybe some 9th-grade public speaking teacher, to Dumb It Down, Dumb It Down, Dumb It Down; & Hammer Home Your Brand ("my father who worked in the mills," "influential Washington lobbyists," etc. etc. etc.). If it's worth saying once, it's worth saying seven times. And then, even more bothersome to me, either his fundamental nature or some other consultant seemed to have coached him to Always Be Nice, so he kept interrupting his train of thought to insert qualifying nice-guy phrases like "not that there's anything wrong with that," "she's a good friend of mine," "I'm sure for the best of motives," etc. As with Obama, I wanted not just a vague indictment of Bush & the GOP but real, hyperventilating, red-faced rage -- & as with Obama, we were getting instead lot of careful, nice-guy platitudes about how we as a nation could do better, about how we as a nation deserved better, about how we as a nation were better, and so on and so on. (I have to say, though, that he was very good in Q & A, as though questions gave him permission to be a lot more specific & a lot more dynamic. He was breathtakingly succinct in his rejection of nuclear power as a "solution to global warming," for example.)

It's the nature of these "events," I suppose, that they must be calculated above all to show the colors, utter reassuring bromides, & not offend anyone. So both "events" left me vaguely impressed with the candidates, vaguely willing to support either of them, & vaguely dispirited by a process that seems to require such choreographed vapidity even from such smart, engaging guys as Obama & Edwards. I'd much prefer to have dinner with them -- in New Hampshire one grows to expect that kind of intimacy.

I stumbled blindly into my third "event" of the season: I was picking a friend up from the Manchester airport -- a New Yorker who had actually researched the attractions of Manchester & decided that he simply had to have lunch at the Red Arrow Diner. Even as we were driving up it was clear that something was going on. There were lines of people out front, cops, TV trucks, creepy guys in suits with wires in their ears -- & no parking anywhere nearby, of course. So we finally ditched the car a few blocks away, came back, went up to a cop, & asked what was going on. "Hillary's here," he said. "Well," I said, "can we just go in & eat?" He shrugged & let us by. Evidently the crowd were all reporters waiting to pounce on people coming out after being in Her Presence. And there She was in a booth near the front, carrying on a regular conversation with a couple of ordinary people ... except that there were TV lights on them, & TV cameras & reporters crammed in everywhere, looking on impatiently, & the ordinary people in the booth with Hillary appeared simultaneously thrilled, mortified, and confused. I couldn't quite make out what any of them were saying, but soon enough she got up & thanked them & small-talked her way to the door, with the damn TV lights tracking every move. I found all this quite creepy -- but here again, I can't blame the candidate per se, since this is simply how the thing is done.

I feel less indulgent toward the fourth & final "event" I witnessed: two days later Hillary appeared at a rally at the same Peterborough Town Hall where I'd seen Edwards. A very different feeling from that, though. For one thing, the crowd was much bigger; in fact, the joint was packed. And the TV trucks were here for her. (I hadn't seen any at the Edwards rally.) Instead of the informal circle of folding chairs at the front, now the stage area was all done up with a floodlit backdrop festooned ("Rove-ishly," I thought) with silhouettes of green windmills at dawn & the slogan "POWERING AMERICA'S FUTURE: New Energy - New Jobs" & the url of her campaign website. The canned warm-up music included the Police doing "Every Little Thing She Does" & a contemporary version of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer" & then Earth, Wind, & Fire doing "Shining Star." Then the local rep in the state legislature, Jill Somebody, came on & gave a long, boring introductory speech, followed by TV's own Bob Vila (the "This Old House" guy) giving a short, dynamic intro while a sign-language lady mouthed & gesticulated along. Today's event, we learned, was the launch of a new campaign theme, America's Green Future.

Then Hillary herself came on -- a huge letdown for me, because I'd come mostly wanting to see Bill. She looked good, very nattily turned out in a dark pantsuit, & she has undeniable star power that really excited a lot of the people in the crowd. But she quickly killed that excitement by reading a dull statement of today's Green theme, just reading it ... until, rather unexpectedly, she looked up & delivered an electrifying extemporaneous screed against Bush/Cheney that had the crowd cheering. Then more dull reading, this time a bullet-list of proposals, all geo-this & green-that. Now, all the while her voice was failing, turning into a barely audible croak -- at length she simply had to stop, she coughed, tried to resume reading but had to cough again, & then rasped out a little joke about sounding like Tallulah Bankhead that got a few rather strained laughs, until some guy shouted, "Hang in there!" & she whispered back as loudly as she could into the mike, "That's one thing you know about me: I hang in there." Wild cheers at this. At last she got to her closing line about how her/our parents were the Greatest Generation so now we had to become the Greenest Generation. Huzzahs.

If the whole thing had ended there, or at least gone to Q & A, I would have been pretty damn impressed overall, despite the slick Theme of the Week packaging. But no -- a team of flunkies hauled out two armchairs, & Hillary & Bob sat down with their cordless mikes for a painfully scripted "conversation" consisting of Bob's softball questions & Hillary's dull, over-practiced speeches on various greeny topics. "I'm so glad you asked about that, Bob." She came across as an A-student turned teacher, often calling upon the audience to raise our hands if, say, we've ever been to Barrow, Alaska, or if we know how to decode Energy Star numbers on home appliances.

After a while Bob made himself scarce & the staged "conversation" gave way to Q & A with the audience. A woman questioner got the biggest ovation of the day when she demanded to know why HC hadn't used the opportunity of this campaign to decry the Bush administration's fear-mongering. Hillary got good traction by contrasting GWB with FDR, but then lost track & droned on much too long & too vapidly about hope, optimism, etc. Other questioners made dull statements about things like LED leakage, the aesthetics of wind farms, & carpooling. Hillary nodded brightly while they spoke ("Yes, yes! I get it, I get it!"); all of her responses seemed to hinge on the creation of "smart grids."

So that was Hillary Clinton in person -- every bit as smart as Obama & Edwards, every bit as impressive & blessed with even greater star wattage, quite brilliant at her best moments ... but also, at her less-than-best moments, much duller & wonkier than Edwards, & much more vapid & vague than Obama. And in the same way, she's both the phoniest of the three -- by far -- & yet she allows these stark, fleeting glimpses of an authentic self having immense stature & dignity.

I have no idea how each will fare with the caucus-goers in Iowa tonight, or with the voters in New Hampshire next week. I hope each of them does well enough to stay firmly in the race for as long as possible, & when the dust settles I hope that none is damaged too badly. I could live with any of the three as nominee. I'd be happy enough to see any of the three (or, for that matter, Richardson or Biden or Dodd or even Kucinich) go to the White House. What I'd really like, I think, is a parliamentary system that would make Obama the head of state -- America's face in the world -- & make Edwards head of government -- the top idea guy & manager -- & make Clinton head fixer, scold, tail-twister, & lightning rod.

But of course we don't have a parliamentary system: we just have one president who's supposed to be all things to all Americans. God help us, the job's impossible, & getting much, much worse. But by God I'll go to the polls next week, declare myself a Democrat long enough to take a ballot & cast my vote, then go back to the sign-in table, restore my independent status, & hope for the best.

That's how it works in New Hampshire -- Live Free or Don't!

(c) Michael Fleming

New Ipswich, New Hampshire

January, 2008

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