Paul Tsongas takes some getting used to.
There is his name. Tsongas, as in the poster at a New Hampshire pool:
”Tswimmers for Tsongas.”
There is his humor. It runs the gamut from droll to dry to wry.
There is also his appearance. Dour. And his defining, life-changing experience. Cancer.
Then there is his prescription to cure the economy. It sounds like the economic equivalent of a bone-marrow transplant. Pretty grim. Great if it works.
The people of New Hampshire had the time to get used to the man from Lowell, Mass. They got over the slight speech impediment and the gray affect and the Speedo swimsuit. Somewhere along the line they stopped thinking of him as another Greek from Massachusetts.
He became the plain, direct, straight-ahead guy who said, clearly, what was wrong and said, clearly, what he would do about it. Again and again. He convinced the voters that he wasn`t Santa Claus and might not be a star, but he knew what he was talking about.
Now that the primary is over, some will tell you Tsongas won because New England is his turf. Local boy makes good.
Some will tell you he didn`t win, Clinton lost. To Gennifer Flowers, to the draft board, to the media. Or maybe they`ll say Clinton won because he survived.
Some will tell you Tsongas is just the Green Room, the waiting room of the Democratic primary. A safe place to put your vote until the real star of the party takes the stage.
Some will tell you he`ll have his slightly balding head handed to him in the South and the West. That he isn`t much for pressing the flesh and has a bit too much arrogance and too little cash.
And there is some truth in all of this.
But sitting here on the New Hampshire border watching this primary unfold over weeks and months, in ads and debates, in the marathon testing of men and messages, it looks like Tsongas took hold for one reason. He was the one Democrat who said best what people know in their gut. The whole world is changing under our feet; we better start catching up.
Credit Pat Buchanan for the most-effective Bush-bashing. But the Democrats in New Hampshire were sending a message as well: George Bush is history. In the literal sense. World War II. The Cold War. The `80s.
No bragging about how we won the Cold War, no rousing choruses of ”We`re No. 1,” not even a replay of the Iraqi desert song can change reality.
There is a strong sense across the country that as the world changes, we are mired in a backwater of nostalgia and economic decay. This is our first post-Cold War election, and the atmosphere here is not unlike England in 1946 when the people turned out Churchill. Thank you very much, sir, and goodbye.
”People want the truth, and I am giving it to them,” Tsongas said. Humility is not the strong suit of this self-declared truth-teller. But clarity is. And so is persistence. He doggedly presented himself as the pro-business liberal, offering pain and perestroika and a pamphlet of economic ideas.
Somewhere in New Hampshire, Bob Kerrey`s persona blurred around the edges and Tom Harkin played to the past and Jerry Brown became as jarring as an 800 number on automatic redial.
What brought Tsongas to the front of the pack was his ability to state the problem and offer a plan. And what stopped Clinton`s slide into oblivion was not his charm or even his cool under fire. It was persistent and confident answers to question after question about what we should do.
This campaign may degenerate into sound bites and back-biting. By September we may be back to red, white and blue. What is worth noting is that the campaign began in New Hampshire with voters looking for the guy who can tell them how to get out of the rut. They want to know what happens next. It`s that old and that fresh.
The first round went to Tcitizens for Tsongas. The message is that we`re getting serious-at last.
