Every four years the pageant of a presidential primary in our fair state and the subsequent wooing of New Hampshire voters is a bit like the high school basketball player who is dating the coach’s daughter. She will never really know if the attention is genuine or merely a ploy for more playing time.
I grew up in a “certain state north of here” and I never once saw a presidential candidate in all my years growing up. They were these mysterious and distant characters on the evening news. (Remember those days?) The area I grew up in was as scenic as New England has to offer, the fantastic Atlantic Ocean on one side and mountains on the other. And in between were enough diners and leafy downtowns to serve as the background for a thousand candidate commercials and direct mailing campaigns. But not a candidate did I see.
Then, when I was a teenager, I had the good fortune to attend one of this state’s fine boarding schools in the tiny western New Hampshire town of Dublin (which then and now has a population that would comfortably fit in a school bus) and every four years the town’s population would triple with media and campaign staff and candidates tripping over themselves to shake old Herman’s hand down at the hardware store. I’m not sure why there was a need to set up a campaign office downtown, but there it was, taking up an old storefront (for the time being).
After college, I decided to relocate back here (well, a certain gainfully employed and beautiful young lady had something to do with it) and I’m still in shock when I come across a candidate on the streets of my hometown of Tilton. This week they were as thick as seagulls on an open bag of potato chips.
I went to get some coffee the other morning at the Tilt’n (love that spelling) Diner and there was candidate A milling with the local morning crew and about a thousand cameramen and reporters. You can tell the reporters because they are the ones standing up in the booth between two patrons who are attempting to eat, holding an outstretched tape recorder. (They are also the ones who look like they got up at three a.m. to do their hair.)
Later that week, I walked a block from my house to the picturesque Northfield Freight House to see Candidate B give his stump speech and answer a few well-chosen questions from strategically planted GOP operatives in the audience.
I was not expecting the crush of reporters and well-quaffed (and scarfed) and frankly, blindingly good-looking people (how do you get your teeth that white? Is it healthy?) posing as New Hampshire voters that awaited me inside.
The Northfield Freight House, with its old-timey wooden paneling and pot-bellied stove heating the interior (as if all the hot air inside the building was not enough) is a fantastic backdrop for a meeting such as this, and was certainly a dream come true to the p.r. folks who work for Candidate B. He should have worn a red-checked flannel hunting shirt and coonskin hat. I couldn’t help but notice the anchors for several well-known news shows in the back row. It turns out they take their desk with them wherever they go.
When Candidate B did arrive he actually gave a pretty mild-mannered stump speech that lasted only a few minutes and immediately started asking questions. But after he called on his first voter, who spoke with an unmistakable New Jersey accent, Candidate B said to the audience, “How many of you fine folks are actually New Hampshire voters?”
About one third of the room raised their hands and the press corps in attendance and en mass in the back shared a laugh with Candidate B.
“For the purposes of time constraints, let me take only questions from New Hampshire voters,” Candidate B wisely said, and I saw a few faces fall. Apparently, many folks were visiting from out of state just to get a good look at candidates A through E (and a few N through Z candidates as well).
What followed was actually a spirited and honest back-and-forth between Candidate B and the audience that left me marveling at what an amazing country I live in. Where else can citizens grill their prospective leaders in the manner in which Candidate B took some tough questions?
For the record, he did well on the domestic questions, explaining his answers in a “college professor style” complete with visual aids made up of his wallet and a pocket-sized U.S. Constitution he carries on his person, but flubbed, flip-flopped and hedged a bit on international policy questions. I hope the president of Iran has better things to do than watch YouTube clips of this town meeting, although candidate B pronounced his name very well.
And the other night, as my wife, Special Sauce, was leaving work for the evening, she happened upon a meeting with Candidate A and watched closely as his entourage plowed their way into the event and spoke harshly to a group of students who were apparently talking too loudly. I guess it’s okay to pander to a prospective voter and their off-the-wall views about where our current president was born, but watch out if you don’t have anything to offer said candidate because you are not of voting age. How you treat everyone counts in my book.
And then, tonight, after a victor is declared and the delegates awarded, Candidates A through Z will depart the state (many a few hours after the polls close) and make their way (with the international press corps) to another state to flirt with their small towns and diner patrons.
They’ll be back in four years, right?
