It’s never over in New Hampshire
WOODSTOCK, N.H. — It’s over. Donald Trump is the inevitable Republican presidential nominee. No, it’s not. Trump is too flawed — and lately too nutty — to be the Republicans’ standard-bearer.
It’s over. Trump is whom the Republicans want. No, it’s not. Deep in their hearts, Republicans want someone more youthful and more polite, less arch and less mean.
It’s over. We’re facing a Trump-Biden rematch. No, it’s not. Stein’s Law — promulgated in 1986 by Herbert Stein, at the time the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers — will come into play: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
It’s over. Trump’s lead is insurmountable. No, it’s not. Someone, somewhere, will appear, and the Trump support will vanish in February 2024 the way he said in February 2020 that COVID would disappear: “One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
Stop in any coffee shop here in New Hampshire, site of the first Republican primary, sit outside and eat at any brewpub, pause by any roadside stand, newly stocked with freshly picked corn, and you’ll hear a version of one of those four debates. Chances are, you will hear them all.
This state is crammed with candidates. One day recently, five presidential candidates held events in Merrimack, whose population (25,969) is less than a quarter of the seating capacity of Penn State’s Beaver Stadium or the University of Michigan’s “Big House” — which may be why politics here is not a spectator sport but is, instead, a participation sport.
But it’s a sport with consequence. New Hampshire has lost its claim that it picks presidential nominees; though it has been right in the last five GOP primaries, Sen. John McCain of Arizona (2000) and political commentator Patrick J. Buchanan (1996) won the primary but not the nomination. Even so, New Hampshire is both staging ground and testing ground for presidential candidacies. It was here that Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, who lost the 1992 primary to Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, nonetheless could claim that he was the “Comeback Kid”
It was here that Democratic Sen. Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, the prohibitive favorite in 1972, failed to meet experts’ expectations and displayed the vulnerability that eventually doomed his campaign.
It is, of course, one of the quirks of American politics that this state is either staging or testing ground at all. Today, commentators repeatedly point out how unrepresentative of America this state is
— so much so that while the Republicans persist in holding the first primary here, the Democrats have moved South Carolina to the front of the parade.
This state’s place in primary politics made no more sense when the tradition started in 1920.
New Hampshire then had a population of a little more than 440,000. (This town had 684 souls.) Search through census data, and you will discover that there were more sheep of shearing age in the state than there were humans in Nashua, the state’s second-biggest city. Blacks accounted for onetenth of 1% of the population. New Hampshire was remote; there were no superhighways. The state roads commission officially designated truck traffic as a “menace.”
But over the decades, the residents of this state have developed a reputation — part myth, part “truth” — of being especially discerning judges of political character. There is no evidence for this, of course, but the Granite State always has been a congenial destination for political reporters; Sen. Gary Hart, who won the 1984 Democratic primary, said that more lies were told at the bar of the Sheraton Wayfarer hotel, at the time the preferred hostelry for candidates and commentators, than anyplace in America. The hotel is gone. The tradition persists.
Now the ForeverTrumpers are taking one position, the NeverTrumpers the other, and it’s anyone’s guess whether the combatants truly believe their protestations. Politics here is a matter of conscience — but also of conversation. And practicality. The saxophone, Clinton’s preferred instrument, has subtones, a musical technique that removes the edge from sound — and, it turns out, political people often employ them, too.
Here are the subtones in this year’s race in New Hampshire: We’re open to an outsider. Our allegiances aren’t as strong as our statements. Surely the country can produce a better choice than between two old men. (Similar subtones are being produced in Iowa, site of the first caucus, where Christian-right kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats is determined to topple Trump.)
In this context, there are two documents that should be passed around whenever the talk turns to politics, which it inevitably does in some circles.
One is a copy of the chapter in Lord James Bryce’s “The American Commonwealth” (1888) titled, “Why Great Men Are Not Chosen Presidents.” The other is the front page of The New York Times on Feb. 28, 1984. As I write this, I’m consulting my own yellowed copy — retained all these years, I suppose, with the thought it might come in handy sometime. It reads: Mondale Lead Over Nearest Rival in Poll Sets Nonincumbent Record.
That piece, published exactly a week before the 1984 New Hampshire primary, said the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll showed former Vice President Walter F. Mondale as the choice of 57% of likely Democratic voters. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was second, with 8%, followed by Sen. John Glenn of Ohio and Hart at 7%.
The voters of New Hampshire thought otherwise. Hart, with 39% of the vote, beat Mondale by 10 percentage points. Glenn finished with 12%.
“We had a theory there were a lot of voters there in New Hampshire who were waiting for the right candidate to come along and activate them,” said Greg Schneiders, a top Glenn aide. “We thought we would defy all the polls. It turns out Gary Hart defied all the polls, and all those people turned out for him.”
Mondale eventually won the nomination, after a long slog against Hart, the surging insurgent. Then Ronald Reagan won the general election by a landslide.
But there is a lesson in that clipping I kept for 40 years.
“The odds were on John Glenn as the runner-up, and not me,” Hart, now 86, told me the other day. “I don’t know anything about American politics anymore — nothing. But I do know that a lead in New Hampshire can be overcome.”