Thursday, January 03, 2008

Is this New Hampshire's last gasp?

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Attention is obviously riveted on Iowa today, but next Tuesday's New Hampshire primary will quickly gain the spotlight. The Granite State event has a long and venerable history, leading presidential contenders to rub shoulders with ordinary citizens in coffee shops and the like. Writing in this week's Phoenix, Adam Reilly believes, though, that this might be the final year in which the New Hampshire primary really matters:

How, exactly, did two small states manage to fend off 48 potential rivals? Chalk it up to inertia, or fear of unintended consequences, or a genuine conviction that New Hampshire and Iowa work, or the fact that any new state(s) poised to bump off Iowa and New Hampshire would similarly incur the envy of their erstwhile allies. But also credit New Hampshire and Iowa for an almost pathological determination to take any steps necessary to maintain their privileged role. “This is their life,” says University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. “They’ll hold their contests right after July 4 the year before the election if they have to — they don’t care, as long as they’re first.” ....

The central argument for the primacy of New Hampshire and Iowa has long been that those states force candidates to practice a different, purer kind of politics. You don’t succeed in those states by bombarding the airwaves with ads or trotting out trite sound bites. You succeed by going out and meeting the public one or two or 10 at a time, face to face, and conversing as equals: that’s retail politics. “It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting,” said New Hampshire state senator Lou D’Allesandro. “And we all want that Norman Rockwell painting to be true.”

Flash back, though, to the aforementioned Obama-Oprah rally, which didn’t quite jibe with this whole notion of noble Granite State exceptionalism. For one thing, Winfrey and the Obamas weren’t courting voters in a living room or a diner — they were wooing them in an 11,000-seat arena that was nearly half full. In addition, while the phrase “New Hampshire primary” conjures up images of crusty Yankees peppering candidates with discomfiting questions, this particular audience was decidedly passive. There was no Q-and-A, so the crowd had to content itself with clapping, or chanting Obama’s name, or just doing the Wave. What’s more, the rally in question was just one in a series of Oprah-Obama events; the duo also visited South Carolina (where they drew 30,000 people) and Iowa, hewing to the same script in all three places.

The Oprah-Obama event doesn’t mean that retail politicking is dead in New Hampshire. But it is a bellwether of sorts: compared to past primaries, Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two Democratic frontrunners, have been paying less attention to intimate events and more to the sort of mass gatherings you’d find in bigger states — like, say, Michigan or Florida. According to James Pindell, who writes the Primary Source blog for the Boston Globe, the shift began with Obama’s first trip to New Hampshire one year ago. “This was a low-dollar fundraiser,” recalls Pindell. “And suddenly, you had 1500 people, one of the largest gatherings in New Hampshire history.”

And isn't the small-town nature of the NH primary at odds with the reality of contemporary politics?

Maybe it’s time to rethink the very notion that starting small means starting better. After all, there’s something escapist and self-delusional about this approach. It’s nice to pretend — for a few months every four years — that America is one big small town, and that the success of our would-be presidents depends on their willingness to chat frankly with ordinary people in ordinary settings. Eventually, though, each and every general-election campaign shows how absurd this charade actually is. You don’t become president by charming a few people at a diner. You do it by raising obscene amounts of money, and spending it on the best pollsters and consultants and organizers you can find, and sticking to an airtight script for months on end, and blanketing the airwaves with ads that make you look better than you are and do the exact opposite for your opponent.

In theory, of course, starting with New Hampshire and Iowa gives unknown candidates a chance to come out of nowhere — relying on charm and hustle and word-of-mouth buzz — and force the nation to take them seriously. Invariably, though, this small-d democratic fantasy carries a decidedly undemocratic price: every time we elect a president, we allow the same two (tiny) states to winnow down the field for the rest of us. Yes, New Hampshire and Iowa offer valuable insight into key electoral groups (exurban independents in the former, Midwesterners and evangelicals in the other). But there are other states that could do this, and other constituencies worth considering. If New Hampshire’s current travails lead, ultimately, to the end of the state’s long ascendancy, presidential politics as we know them won’t be ruined. But they will be a little bit fairer.

2008 presidential race | Voting