There are moments in this blooming presidential campaign when a hired observer feels as if he has fallen into a seminar on the intricacies of the investment tax credit.
Perhaps it`s the becalmed economy, or the brain-dead nature of recent White House pursuits, but this affair sounds like serious business.
If you don`t have a six-point program for economic recovery and a comprehensive plan for overhauling the nation`s health-care system, you might as well stop whistling ”Hail to the Chief” and go home.
Sure, there`s plenty of empty-headed rhetoric and self-serving behavior on the part of The Men Who Would Be President.
There`s already been a sex scandal of sorts, and talk show host Patrick J. Buchanan has been verbally whacking his fellow Republican, George Bush, for more than eight weeks.
The Democrats, however, are determined to traverse the high road.
Given half a chance and a crew from C-Span, most of the Democrats running for Bush`s job will put you into a full snore on the issues.
Ah, the issues. In the 1992 campaign, candidates love them, for the most part, and New Hampshire voters say they can`t hear enough about them.
No more simple-minded ”flexible freezes” and toothy charisma for this New Hampshire crowd, now sinking into the third year of a savage recession.
Even former California Gov. Jerry Brown has calmed down about the
”vortex of corruption” in Washington and started talking about his gubernatorial record in Sacramento.
To track the candidates across the Granite State these days is to be provided with a middle-class education.
With the state`s first-in-the-nation presidential primary a little more than a week away, this has become the term-paper campaign.
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On the stump the Democrats brandish position papers, white papers, fiscal game plans and assorted challenges, blueprints and calls to economic arms.
Even Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa tough guy who figured he might steal the Democratic nomination by simply promising not to be former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, was forced to go to press with his own double-spaced economic program.
Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, whose Ozark bonhomie has been tested by recent events, maintains his A-student style as he motors around the state.
The traveling press wants to talk about those telephone tapes with Gennifer Flowers, and Clinton`s dealings with his draft board back in the tumultuous 1960s.
Crowds in the Granite State are substance junkies, however, and the former Rhodes scholar spews public policy positions like a lawn sprinkler.
Last week at Concord High School, Clinton cleanly fielded questions from the audience on the 1986 tax reform bill, parental notification on abortion, an investment tax credit for new businesses, and the passive-loss provisions of real estate law.
Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey is serious. He entered the race with a corner on charisma, but he`s been working hard to fend off that perception.
Kerrey joined the field with a storybook biography; a Medal of Honor won in Vietnam; a reputation for stirring oratory; a chain of Cornhusker eateries he developed with his brother-in-law; a Hollywood girlfriend.
For all that, Kerrey has run as a man who is going to be taken seriously even if it is the unmaking of his campaign.
If the polls are correct, there is some evidence that his approach is doing just that.
Across New Hampshire, Kerrey befuddles audiences who are inclined to like him.
He turns up at local high schools, puts his personal story on the shelf and lectures students about the wonders of fiber optics and ”R and D.”
You can`t talk about being serious, of course, without talking about Paul Tsongas.
The former Massachusetts senator is the sort of citizen who finds ”The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” a trifle frothy.
Ask him about unemployment benefits and he fires back with a discussion of corporate quarterly reports and ”director liability.”
You don`t have to be skeptical about Tsongas` message to cringe when he holds up his 86-page economic call to arms and intones:
”This is not a campaign document. This is a blueprint for governance.”
Here in New Hampshire, we`re up to the snow line in governance. And that`s the way the contenders say they like it.
Call them anything. Call them long shots. Call them second-tier candidates. Call them the great pretenders.
Just don`t say they aren`t as serious as a heart attack.