We touched down in Baltimore at 11pm Sunday night. One day separated us from the polls. When we’d arrived in New Hampshire 4 days earlier, Hillary led the Democratic crowd, but her advantage had evaporated, leaving behind only a significant deficit. During that time, most of the Republicans and all of the major Democratic candidates had blitzed through the state searching for that coveted undecided voter. I’m glad I wasn’t one: I’d only had three and a half days to canvass the candidates, but I couldn’t pick a favorite for all my efforts.
We’d tried to see the Republican candidates, for the record, but they didn’t seem to be fighting with the same intensity as their Democratic counterparts. Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson’s websites were either poorly navigable or lacked lists of upcoming events. Moreover, they were, for the most part, living in a different reality. At the Saturday night debate, most of the Republicans were convinced that the economy was going swimmingly, Bush’s policies were unquestionably wonderful, withdrawing from Iraq was a sop to terrorism, there was nothing wrong with healthcare, and taxes were simply too high. Obviously, they’re pandering to their base, and as a Democrat, it is difficult for me to empathize with their perspective. But I find it telling that the only two Republican candidates with serious momentum (besides Ron Paul, which is an entirely different phenomenon) were Huckabee and McCain: both had web sites that were easy to navigate and clearly and prominently showed upcoming events (accordingly, they were the only ones we got close to seeing). They were, of course, startlingly different; Huckabee had cast himself as an economic populist, whereas McCain’s image was that of a tough prosecutor of the current administration’s corruption and protector of the country. The ‘change’ buzzword that Romney repeated like a mantra was indeed an expression of the vision of the populace, but most of the Republican candidates acted as if it was October, 2001.
Democracy, according to legend, functions best in small spaces: Athens, for example, or an Israeli kibbutz. New Hampshire is a small sandlot that should fulfill that conventional wisdom. And in a way, it does: the major cities in the Southern part of the state are easily accessible to each other, allowing the candidates and voters to actually engage in discussion over the issues. Each candidate is so desperate for votes that they usually will take the time to allow any people they encounter to evaluate their character as well (with some notable exceptions, like Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani, who seemed to be non-existent).
But can the micro make decisions for the macro? Even if a significant majority of New Hampshire’s fine folks have taken the time to truly evaluate the candidates, the state is a poor representation of the country as a whole. Traveling through the state, the lack of color in the faces was unnerving to a white kid who grew up in a 30/30/30 white/black/Hispanic town. The cities are small, and, while charming, cannot elicit the same challenges and solutions as New York or Chicago.
Nor were the people as engaged in the election as I’d expected. Maybe I’d had a romantic, naieve view of the situation, but I imagined 1800′s French saloon-type discussions everywhere. A few people were willing to share their views, particularly at the events, but many, many people were disengaged. On Saturday night, when ABC was airing live back-to-back Republican and Democratic debates, not a bar in Portsmouth was showing it. In DC, election season is titillating; major debates spawn viewing parties for a range of political persuasions, bars advertise drink specials.
Maybe that lack of public engagement is a good thing. Elections are too much about the horse race in DC, the minor shuffles and gaffes that provide ammunition for newspaper columns and the cable shows. This trickles into the rest of the country, where campaigns dissolve from real concerns about the future to the immaterial and immortal question about who to best share a beer with. The Hillary town hall we attended, for example, only reached the general public as a story decrying her inability to fill a high school gymnasium as a sign of her electoral doom. Nary a drop was spilled about what she said; of course, the reporters covering her could probably recite her answers for her thanks to sheer repetition.
New Hampshire’s primary, which will end in a few hours, will have a disproportionate impact on the country. If the polls are accurate, the media will anoint Obama nominee. McCain, Romney and Huckabee will either praise or dismiss the results, then run to South Carolina, hands locked tightly around each others’ necks. But life will continue in the state after the cameras and candidates escape. The snow will slide off trees and rooftops, melting into streams and bays. People will go back to work, traffic finally uncongested again. The trees in New Hampshire will continue to stand contemplative, their branches weighted with snow. Occasionally, a wind from a passing truck will dislodge some of the frozen powder, and it will sigh to the ground in a cascade of white dust. And all that will remain of the millions of dollars spent here will be a few neglected Ron Paul signs, half buried in a snowbank, yellowing with age.
