The frenzy has begun, marking the final days, the last critical hours, before the voters step in Tuesday to play the most important role in the opening scene of the 1992 presidential campaign.
It is likely that candidates will be made and broken in this state that thrives every four years on the part it plays in modern presidential politics. President Bush will see the first true measure of the recession`s impact on his political fortunes. The Democrats will learn which of their many messages has won an embrace.
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But more than votes and more than delegates, New Hampshire this year is about perceptions. The campaigns have been waged against a backdrop of deep economic trouble, with the Granite State serving as a microcosm of the economic condition of the rest of the nation.
As election day approaches, the struggle to control those perceptions, to convince voters that a campaign is moving upward, that a theme is drawing broad support, headed toward a fever pitch within both parties.
The reason why was as clear, and at the same time as murky, as the latest sets of poll results, which were neither conclusive nor comforting.
On the Republican side, Bush appeared to hold a wide margin of support in a Boston Globe tracking poll completed last Thursday. The poll found 50 percent of the respondents would vote for Bush. His challenger from the Republican Party`s right wing, columnist Patrick Buchanan, had 33 percent, with 9 percent opting for ”other” candidates and 8 percent undecided.
But the American Research Group in its poll in the Manchester Union Leader gave Bush 43 percent and Buchanan 29 percent, with a 22 percent of the voters undecided. Each poll had a 5 point margin of error.
The same polls presented some conflicting pictures in the Democratic contest, too. In general, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas,
uncharismatic but compelling with his economic proposals, his daily one-hour swims before the media and the touching and powerful story of his battle with cancer, was moving well ahead.
Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, whose well-organized and well-presented campaign was derailed by the recollections of a cabaret singer who claimed she had a 12-year affair with him and a flap over his draft record during the Vietnam War, was fighting to regain ground.
The Globe`s poll gave Tsongas 32 percent, with Clinton winning 24 percent. At one stage, it appeared that every two points dropped from Clinton`s column moved directly into Tsongas` tally. But after Clinton moved aggressively to draw attention back to economic issues, his campaign started to move up.
There was not much in the Boston poll to hearten the other Democrats. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, the most liberal and, lately, the most aggressive, had 12 percent. Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska was at 9 percent. Former California Gov. Jerry Brown had 4 percent. New York Gov. Mario Cuomo drew a write-in vote of 5 percent. Another 5 percent said they would vote for
”others,” and 10 percent were undecided.
And the American Research Group poll reported Tsongas at 26 percent and Clinton at 18 percent. That poll showed 24 percent undecided on the Democratic side.
But there is a genuine wild card within the poll in that 10 percent of the respondents said they would write-in Cuomo`s name. Should that happen, Cuomo, the non-candidate, would come in third Tuesday.
That could send a death notice to the campaigns of the three Democrats at the bottom of the list: Harkin, Kerrey and Brown. It also would turn up the flame under the simmering draft-Cuomo movement, crafted by Chicago political operatives Don Rose and Phil Krone.
These numbers, however dubious in the constantly changing dynamics of hot political contests, can be misleading. In the past, candidates who have been low in the polls have won the primary. Nevertheless, as time runs short, the polls have helped shape the form and rhetoric of campaigns on both sides.
In Concord on Friday, Buchanan held a news conference to push themes he has been using successfully against Bush for several weeks. News that the president had not included a $500 tax incentive for the middle class in the budget message he sent to Congress, although he included it in his State of the Union address, prompted the Buchanan attack.
”A complete cave-in; a cynical betrayal of the American middle class,”
Buchanan said of the tax issue. Bush handed the tax issue to the Democratic Congress ”as easily as a 12-year-old snatches candy from a 5-year-old,” he added.
When he gets to the White House, Buchanan said, he will cut taxes across the board and fight the Democrats in Congress from day one.
Buchanan is playing a complicated game, perhaps the biggest
”perceptions” game of them all. While Bush`s 50-33 percent rating in the one poll may seem a healthy margin, it is not for an incumbent president in a very conservative state.
Bush could be deeply embarrassed by a Buchanan performance in the 40-percent range, even though he will have ”won” the contest.
The White House is aware of its problem in the Granite State. Bush returned to New Hampshire Saturday morning for two full campaign days. Various surrogates have made campaign stops all week.
On the Democratic side, Tsongas was experiencing a round of what might be called ”front-runner targeting” from the other Democrats, particularly Harkin.
The Iowan attacked Tsongas as a supporter of nuclear energy, a sensitive issue in New Hampshire because of the controversial Seabrook nuclear plant. He implied the former senator would back the construction of nuclear facilities all over the country should he reach the White House.
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Tsongas countered by noting that there have been nuclear power plants in Iowa for years, and Harkin ”didn`t say boo” about the subject until now.
Harkin also fielded television ads in which he lumped together Clinton, Tsongas and Kerrey for their proposals for tax cuts. The ad goes on to describe the Iowa senator as a politician in the style of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.
In the wake of the primaries, it will be noted that an awful lot of political weight was invested in this beautiful, rocky state, where there are about 100,000 Democrats, 125,000 Republicans and 100,000 registered independents.
But it is history, not the numbers, that gives New Hampshire its clout.
It has been sending important messages to the nation since 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower, then NATO commander, warmed to the idea of a presidential campaign when his backers managed a big victory in the state`s first real presidential beauty contest.
Truman received an unfortunate message that same year, when he sat in Washington as Estes Kefaver shook the hands and pounded the pavement and won the primary. Lyndon Johnson got a message about the Vietnam War from Sen. Eugene McCarthy in 1968.
Up to this point in modern times, the president who has walked into the White House in January started the journey with a victory in his party`s New Hampshire primary.