Even the chairman of the New Hampshire Young Republicans has an opinion on it.
“That lighting is terrible,” says Chris “Tex” Williams — that’s what his Durango SUV license plate says, “Tex” — as he looks up at the TV hanging in one corner of JD’s tavern in downtown Manchester.
A dozen of Williams’ fellow YRs between the ages of 21 and 33 are watching last week’s Democratic debate with varying degrees of interest, derision and across-the-divide wonderment.
Maybe it’s the Republican skepticism all around me, emitting a cool neon red, white and blue. Maybe it’s the withering Deputy Dawg glare of the debate’s co-moderator Brit Hume, the man who puts the “uncle” in “avuncular” on Fox News. But the lighting does indeed look terrible.
In the days leading up to the New Hampshire primary, I have caught most of the Democratic presidential hopefuls in solo performance on various stages in Manchester, Nashua and Portsmouth. For the Dems the debate was just another gig in a grueling touring schedule. A political junkie could, if desired, catch the presidential hopefuls in solo performance on various stages around the state. Last week I saw John Kerry deliver sober President Bush reprimands to a polite but warily enthusiastic crowd in Nashua. Wesley Clark’s followers in Manchester watched Bush’s State of the Union address and hooted all the way through it, like a midnight campus screening of “Duck Soup.”
Anyone wondering why John Edwards did well in Iowa found out at a Wednesday night performance in Portsmouth, in a Veterans of Foreign Wars post with an old Pepsi sign above the entrance. Live, in full rhetorical flourish, the North Carolina senator — a former trial lawyer — is like a John Grisham superhero, right down to the twirly index-finger gestures (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). “A lot of these guys are saying the same thing,” said hardwood lumber company worker Ethan Bessey, of Durham, after the Edwards town hall meeting, the 100th Edwards has done in New Hampshire. “It’s how they’re saying it.”
Matters of presentation and packaging and theatrics in 21st Century political life may not mean everything, but they mean a lot. Trying to hang onto his frayed voice and correct his polls, Howard Dean has gone back to charm school in the wake of getting Deaned by his own concession speech, featuring the yelp heard ’round the world.
The schooling comparisons abound this week. “The last two weeks of this campaign have really been very different,” said Kerry at Daniel Webster College. “Four hours’ sleep a night, some all-nighters, a lot of cold pizza, occasional warm beer, a lot of Hostess Cupcakes. Folks, I feel like I’m back in exam week in college.”
Manchester and environs in the days before the primary is a strange mixture of orientation and finals at a liberal arts university, with poly-sci majors running around trying to accommodate or dodge (or, somehow, both) the camera-toting, notebook-shlepping mass communication and journalism majors.
It’s finals week and an out-of-town tryout in one.
The previous Tuesday, on a cold and windy night, Clark played the Palace Theatre in downtown Manchester. The event was a State of the Union-watching party, followed by Clark’s response to Bush’s latest utterances.
On stage, the classic C-SPAN scenic design. Eight flags backing three rows of Ordinary Americans. The packed house awaits Clark. The pre-show music includes “I’m So Tired” from the Beatles’ “White Album,” and it doesn’t seem like the right choice for a political rally.
Clark comes out and riles up the crowd with his standard stump speech, well delivered. “I believe in studying, and in doing my homework,” Clark says, after reminding the crowd that “we did not have to fight this war!” As a huge video-projection screen descends from the stage’s flyloft, the general says: “Let’s see what he has to say.”
Partisan responses
From the first pre-speech sightings of Cheney and Rummy, the crowd lets loose with hisses and genuine “booooooooooos.” The camera cuts to a shot of Edward Kennedy. “YAAAAAYYYY!” A few minutes later, once Bush has begun his litany of accomplishments in the areas of public education, Kennedy is caught on camera doing his best Edgar Kennedy slow burn (back to “Duck Soup”), and the audience loves it. Bush mentions something about “free elections in the Middle East,” which is interrupted by — “What about FLORIDA?” some guy in the crowd hollers. Big laugh. It’s like the “Sing-a-Long Wizard of Oz,” only it’s “Heckle the Wizard of Crawford.”
The next morning Dean speaks to his campaign workers and a couple of hundred media jackals at his Manchester campaign headquarters. It is a low-ceilinged room, on the other side of the same building where the Kerry campaign headquarters — a high-ceilinged room — makes its home. Dean’s voice is completely shot. In a chagrined manner he reiterates his confidence that he’ll win New Hampshire. One of his workers yells, “We believe in you, Howard!” Dean reminds him it’s all about “believing in YOU.” Outside a shoving match breaks out between someone from the local Channel 4 outlet and a Dean staffer. No punches are thrown, but it’s tense.
And the Dean van, quite suddenly, is gone.
It’s clear by now that Kerry can position himself, confidently, as the anti-scuffle candidate.
On the road to Daniel Webster College in Nashua later that day, the signs on the road harken back to the old Burma Shave roadside ads, without the creativity. Nothing clever, or aggressively “take back the country” in the messages here. They say, simply: Kerry. Kerry. KerryKerryKerryKerry.
Inside the college auditorium Kerry takes the stage coughing and sniffling, like a Method actor preparing for a NyQuil commercial audition.
He seems tired, which may explain his desire to relay the four hours’ sleep anecdote about finals week. He soldiers through his speech. It’s a little flat. The strain of the campaigning appears to be getting to him, if not to his standing in the latest polls.
`Small Town’
That night at the Portsmouth VFW hall, to the tune of his campaign theme song “Small Town” by John Mellencamp, Edwards wades through a thick crowd of 400 or so. Edwards’ press guy is quietly frantic: A rogue photographer has left the media holding pen and positioned herself on the makeshift, in-the-round stage, where the Ordinary Citizens are supposed to be.
“I’m just screwed, I can’t control these people,” the young man says, before giving up. Edwards’ stump speech — a canny blend of populist concerns and rhetorical clarity, tied to a theme of the “two Americas” under Bush — is a pip. Virtually none of its punch can be detected the following night in the bits and pieces recycled for the debate.
Back at JD’s, hanging with the YRs, I realize I’m the oldest person at the table by nearly 10 years. They are a nice enough bunch of folks: state senate aids, real estate people, consultants. New Hampshire YR chair Chris Williams came to New Hampshire to work on the McCain campaign in 2000, and then stayed.
He’s asked who he’d relish going up against in November. “Dean!” he says, after a nanosecond. He grins. Bush’s toughest potential opponent? “Kerry,” he says, adding that Kerry could probably best the president in a debate setting.
The debate begins. A few minutes later everyone’s talking, briefly, about the ’70s-porn-movie lighting and how lousy all the Dems look as a result.
Dennis Kucinich mentions funding for the arts, and government spending on “the creativity of our children.” “Yeccccch,” says Mark Sanborn, who’s in real estate. “Is it just me, or does Kerry look lost tonight?” offers someone at the far end of the table.
Iowa yelp
The debate ends, and everyone sticks around for Diane Sawyer’s TV interview with Howard and Judy Dean. Dean tries to laugh off the Iowa yelp. Someone at the end of the table does his own version of the holler.
YR chair Williams, scanning the check the waitress has just dropped on the table, talks about being young and Republican in a town that’s lousy with campaigning Democrats. “Out-of-town Democrats,” he’s quick to specify.
With a friendly smile, he says: “It’s not our turn right now. So we sit back and watch the show, basically. Once they choose their nominee, we get to swing into action.”
“And that’s when the fun begins.”
Someone does the Dean yelp again. Everybody laughs. Then, closing up his wallet, Williams relays what Fox News would label a Big Fact: He heard recently that the ABC News bus, one of many media buses crawling the streets and highways of New Hampshire this week, used to belong to Justin Timberlake.
