Hanover, N.H. — It snowed way up in the northern hills the other day. Not a whole lot, just enough to get people talking. Just enough to make people realize that New Hampshire has reached one of those passages, the beginning of a new season. It happens, with awesome regularity, in nature. It happens in politics, too.
For this is another season. The last one ended but a few days ago, with the re-election of a man who didn't win his first New Hampshire primary and who didn't win the state when he ran for a second term in this month's general election. He's the president now and, as such, peculiarly uninteresting for this peculiarly political state. George W. Bush can't run again, so how can he hold anyone's attention here?
Already the talk has started. I agree: Writing about the 2008 presidential race while it's still 2004 is a crime worthy of the death penalty. But grant me a pardon, if just for a moment. I'm here only for a few days. I'll be back home, where the 2008 contest is actually four years away, real soon.
This is one of only two states to switch sides in the great cultural divide of the 21st century. New Hampshire voted for Bush in 2000 and for Kerry in 2004. The state, once a Republican redoubt, has become the Pennsylvania of New England, a classic swing state. In fact, New Hampshire is now two states -- one classic, one swing.
Let the record show: No candidates have opened headquarters up here, no candidates have lined up supporters. But it won't be long. Nature, and New Hampshire, abhors a vacuum, and there is something of an empty feeling up here. Empty, but kind of pleasant nonetheless.
They'll be here soon
That won't last forever. Last Sunday, former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont spoke to Dartmouth students. You can bet Evan Bayh, just re-elected to the Senate from Indiana, will be here soon. Nice fellow, very presentable, and the kind of moderate that the Democrats always say they want to nominate before they settle on someone from Massachusetts.
Bayh has one compelling advantage, seldom contemplated but, to those who marinate themselves in the arcana of politics, absolutely irresistible: He can win Indiana, which, with the exception of the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964, has been awash in Republican red for 64 years. (That argument didn't work for his father, Sen. Birch Bayh, who came in third in 1976, with 15.2 percent of the vote, nor for Sen. Vance Hartke, whose presidential candidacy up here in 1972 is remembered by no one, including the 2,417 people who voted for him and gave him 2.7 percent of the vote.)
Bill Richardson will be here one of these days, too. A man who once served as ambassador to the hated United Nations can't show his face most places in America, and in the old days, William Loeb, the irascible publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, used to berate the U.N. in front-page editorials. But Loeb is dead, there's an internationalist strain up here and, besides, when has anyone in Contoocook or Gorham last seen a governor of New Mexico? He'll be a curiosity.
Watch for Tom Vilsack to poke his head into the hills here, too. He's the governor of Iowa, but he knows that if he runs for president, the Iowa caucuses won't mean a thing. For him, and for everyone else, the race will start in Manchester, N.H., not Manchester, Iowa.
Kerry clouds matters
Then there's Hillary Clinton. The minute she boards a plane at LaGuardia for New Hampshire the old crowd of reporters and hangers-on will reassemble. There's hardly been a poll, but every pol knows she's the woman to beat. More so, curiously enough, than John Edwards, late the Democratic vice presidential nominee. He did well enough in the 2004 general election, but (funny that this is the standard) he was no Edmund S. Muskie, who used a refreshing performance as the 1968 running mate to vault into contention for the 1972 nomination.
Now here's the question that clouds everything. John F. Kerry nearly beat the president, and the question for 2008 will be whether his near-miss makes him more, or less, appealing for another shot. History offers little guidance. Al Gore became radioactive after his 2000 loss to Bush. Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York and Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois both lost presidential races only to bounce back and win the nomination four years later, when, fatefully, they lost again. Then there was Richard M. Nixon. He lost in 1960, sat out 1964, stormed back in 1968 and won the White House. So don't count out either Kerry ... or Gore.
What for the GOP?
The Republican picture is even less clear. Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida has said he won't run, but he might be an appealing vice presidential candidate for a party that wants a bit more of the Bush magic and a strong shot at winning Florida. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee has a beguiling profile as a surgeon-turned-politician, and he showed a streak of aggressiveness in doing what is not done by flying into South Dakota and helping to defeat the minority leader, Tom Daschle, in a brutal Senate race.
Sen. Rick Santorum of Penn Hills, Pa., is looking seriously at a presidential race. So are Vietnam hero Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John McCain of Arizona (who won the GOP contest here in 2000). Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, too. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York is healthy and rested. (Also restive.) Every one of them has been in the state within the last year, and Giuliani, Pataki and McCain were in the state in the last week of this year's campaign. McCain will be back Thursday, when he is to be the featured speaker at the Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in Manchester.
Then there is a potential candidate who has won a gubernatorial seat in a state that went for both Gore and Kerry, has a shining visage, was a successful businessman and is known for his piety. Sounds pretty good, until you realize that there's something about Mitt Romney that just might not fly. Let me whisper what it is: He's from Massachusetts.
David Shribman is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate.
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