"Respect the people," is what Bill Bradley wrote in the Secretary of State's registration book as he officially declared his candidacy in New Hampshire. It is impossible to tell if Bradley was being hopeful or prescient, but either way, the people of New Hampshire have been respected in this campaign. What distinguishes this presidential nominating contest from others in recent memory is twofold: the quality of the viable candidates and the quality of their campaigns.
Bradley and his cohorts -- George Bush, John McCain, and Al Gore -- are arguably among the best group of viable candidates to covet New Hampshire votes in recent years. Many people believe that nearly any one of them would make a competent president. Likely voters rate them all as strong leaders and highly trustworthy. Most importantly, though, nearly all of them reached out to New Hampshire voters these last few months in an impressive manner -- respecting the people.
McCain has conducted well over 100 town hall meetings in the state of New Hampshire -- small, crowded rooms filled with people asking complicated questions but wanting simple answers. Bradley has held over 50 of these meetings. The most recent one in this area was last week in Lebanon.
The room at the Lebanon senior center was typical -- linoleum floor, the smell of coffee brewing, sweet pastries for the tasting. Despite the buzzing of a national press corp crowded on a too small press platform, the atmosphere was comfortable. Overstuffed living room chairs with hand made afghans draped overtop set the stage for Bradley's comments. New Hampshire voters poured into the room and visited with their neighbors as one man played American folk songs on what could have been an antique upright piano. Hand painted red, white and blue signs hung from the walls -- if there was any doubt about whether New Hampshire should remain the first in the nation primary, this put it to rest.
The people at the Lebanon Senior Center didn't come to see a celebrity. They came to listen to a man they believed might be the next leader of our country. There was no high school band blaring loudly -- no Girl Scouts strategically posed for the backdrop of this "photo op." A slick advance person might judge this room, this event, as dull -- but that would be because in the world of presidential campaigning, the campaign staff rarely stays in the room during the event they've planned (they, of course, are off to plan the next event). This room was about the feeling of being there, not about the pictures or sound bites coming out of it. The event respected the people actually in the room, the Granite Staters. And that is what everyone watching this campaign on television misses -- the mood, the sentiment, the emotion that bursts out as you watch the candidates listening to your neighbors and, well, respecting them.
And that's my sense of how most of these candidates have campaigned around our state this fall and winter. Retail politics -- live contact between candidates and people -- defines New Hampshire politics. Nearly one out of every five likely voters will meet a candidate at some point before the election. No other state can boast such a high level of contact. People may be meeting the candidate they are going to vote for, or it might be the one they think they are going to vote for, regardless, after they meet him -- they like him more. Candidates should come here and visit, they should find elder gentlemen to play folk songs on old pianos and they should sit in velveteen chairs left over from the 1970's -- it works here, and that's a wonderful thing.
