| by Dr. Jeffrey Lant They're at it again. Picking on the little guy. Telling you you don't deserve it... trying to take away your chief claim to fame and fortune. But this little guy is shrewd, he's been through all this before, and will, I predict and hope, remain the little guy we want to hold the very first presidential primary every four years. You are the State of New Hampshire... and I, for one, though from one of the big states with a lackluster primary, support you and salute you for the supremely smart ways you use to retain your crucial #1 primary position. Unlike the covetous folks from Florida, Michigan, even California who don't know you. I do; New Hampshire after all is only 30 minutes away from Cambridge, Massachusetts. I know just how tenacious, inventive, clever you are.... and just how much you value and love your place in America's political history. You are New Hampshire... and no one is going to take your beloved presidential primary away from you, though this year as always they are trying like the dickens to do just that. Some background The first New Hampshire presidential primary was held in 1916. On the Republican side a slate of unpledged delegates was elected. The reigning GOP establishment ordinarily did this when there was no sitting Republican president (like Calvin Coolidge in 1924); they could use these delegates to bargain. The first named person to win the New Hampshire primary was President Woodrow Wilson. He then went on win a second term. The primary didn't begin to take on its current significance until 1952. The Republicans had been out of power since 1932 and were desperate to get the White House back. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio ("Mr. Republican"), son of President William Howard Taft, was expected to net the nomination. But a group of Republicans, including twice defeated (1944, 1948) presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, were sure Taft was a loser. They wanted General Dwight David Eisenhower. Eisenhower was what America loves, a real bona fide hero, scandal free, a household name. "I like Ike," said the famous campaign button... and everybody else did too. So likeable, so electable, was Ike that both the Democrats and the Republicans went after him as their preferred presidential candidate. Having simplified its ballot access rules in 1949, New Hampshire was ready to make history in 1952. However, was Eisenhower a Democrat... or a Republican? No one, maybe even the General himself, knew.... President Truman, however, offered to forego another run in favor of Eisenhower if the Democrats could get him. The Republicans also wanted him. Eisenhower chose the GOP; Truman threw his hat in again though he had spirited competition in folksy Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. New Hampshire was poised to make history... and it did. First Kefauver beat Truman, thereby ending the President's political career, sending him back, embittered, to Independence, Missouri and his nagging mother- in-law, who still thought he hadn't been good enough for her dowdy daughter Bess. Then Ike pulverized Taft. New Hampshire woke up to the fact that it was Important, Very, Very Important. And they have never forgotten, making history over and over again; each time enraging other states... who don't like the power and glory of the pip-squeak. They say, envy and jealousy unpleasantly apparent, that New Hampshire is too small to have this honor.... its population insufficiently representative of America... its kind of personal politics outmoded in the age of mass media. New Hampshire's clipped, New England response? "Nuts" (The celebrated reply of U.S. General McAuliffe when asked in 1944 to surrender.) Here is their more complete response. On the matter of retail politics being outmoded, New Hampshire says that it provides an absolutely crucial service for both candidates and America. Candidates, they rightly say, need time to perfect their message and learn how to interact with people... and run a better campaign. They learn these skills in New Hampshire and from its citizens, who, remember, tutor the candidates every four years. Folks in New Hampshire pepper the candidates with every kind of query and remark; the better to know them, the better to educate them. Its citizens come to see and know the candidates well, weighing their merits and demerits, scrutinizing them up close and personal. Candidates who are not known before the New Hampshire primary are able to use foot power and meagre campaign budgets to gain adherents and become effective persuaders. They couldn't do this elsewhere, in other states; there the logistics work against this approach. New Hampshire, advocates of other, bigger states, aver is unrepresentative of America. This criticism roils its citizens. Have we not paid America's taxes? Have we not fought America's wars? Have the sons and, yes, the daughters, too, of our Granite State not died to maintain the nation? Have we not helped America by conscientiously scrutinizing each and every candidate helping to select the best of what this great country offers? Is all this not enough to keep the institution we have created, protected, built? No, these covetous, big states say, it is not enough... and never will be. You are small and weak, New Hampshire, we shall eat you and take the presidential primary you have fashioned, with all its emoluments and perquisites, the money, the fame, the storied place in our nation's legend. New Hampshire's ultimate weapon. For just such states and circumstances, New Hampshire has on its books a purposeful law. This strict law, universally popular and supported by every Granite State citizen of whatever party, mandates that the New Hampshire primary must and shall be held at least one week before ANY other state's presidential primary. In this law, the mouse has well and truly roared. This is why, about a year from today (or earlier if necessary to maintain its primacy) the good citizens of New Hampshire will trek through the snow and mud to exercise one of the chief rights of our democracy; to advance some, to rusticate others, with grave deliberation and forethought. It is New Hampshire's pride to do so... and they will do whatever is necessary to keep it, "Live Free or Die." |
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