New Hampshire Diary

A Wake, A Whimper and a Whack

Here I am in Concord N.H. It’s the Monday before the primary.

I flew in yesterday. I’m here for a wake.

My first NH primary was in 1988. Been here ever since, often as a participant and if not that as a card-carrying member of the Televised Political Opinion Industry. After I landed in Boston I drove up to meet a close friend and his wife at the Bedford Village Inn. As I drove into the snowy parking lot, I felt a wave of nostalgia. The Bedford Village Inn was the classiest hotel in town and used to be NBC News’ official home base for the NH primary — Russert loved the place — and I have many happy memories of past primaries there.

So I walked into the cozy tavern thinking about those days and immediately got a cold, hard lesson about New Rules in this modern Republican age: NBC News was long gone. Fox News’ has taken over the place: the brightly lit news set I saw was theirs. NBC News, now set up at in Manchester, had already decided to leave town early. No story to be found here.

The Inn’s tavern was half empty. In past years you’d have needed the Detroit Lion’s offensive line to get into the place during the last weekend before the primary. Waiting for my friends, I found a table. In a corner of the room I saw Brit Hume and I wandered over to chat. I had not seen him in person for years. We did the old warhorse thing and chatted about past primaries and lamenting the decline. Then my friends arrived and we ate, also remembering better years here and more exciting times. On the way out we stopped to chat with the incredibly amiable Steve Doocy who was sitting alone in the booth behind us.

“It’s over,” my friend said as we walked to the parking lot. He was a local hack and a seasoned veteran of decades of NH primaries. We go back to the Great Buchanan War of ‘92.

“There is no interest in it. No energy. Nothing. The primary is dead.”

We plodded through the snow to our cars. The Fox set lit up the night, ready to crank up the machine on Election Day to report the coronation. Neither of us think Nikki will pull this off, but my pal is voting for her and I want her to win too. Hell, I’d want a box of hammers to win too, anything but Trump.

I drove north to Concord. In a private club/cabin in the woods a get together was being held for the traveling press corps and a few OG NH political hacks. It was billed as a party, but everybody knew the truth: it was a wake. We were there to bury the late, great New Hampshire primary.

The place we met in reeked of history; which made it all sting a bit more. It was stuffed with old black and white photos of past New Hampshire political kingmakers and tycoons. In corner of the main room there is a wooden phone booth. Club members had voted overwhelmingly against having a phone installed in their hideaway club way back when, but U.S. Senate Majority Leader Styles Bridges (R-N.H.) was an enthusiastic club Member, so the White House had a direct line to Oval installed.

It was a worthy wake. Though the old pros among us saw a few young reporters and operatives and traded sad glances. They’ll probably never have the New Hampshire rides we did.

Reporters used to have a special affection for the NH primary. It is a compact state and easy to cover, and not far from DC or NYC. It was filled with odd characters and in the new age of televised politics the Granite State visually reflected its mythology… long-shot candidates working hard in small New England town hall meetings, stomping through the deep snow to face crusty Yankee voters, never an easy sell. They would make their pitches, choke down some poutine at Chez Vachon on the west side of Manchester (trust me, the crepes are the thing to get), and answer every last voter question at a hundred small house parties. All part of earning the highest office in the land the old-fashioned way; voter to voter, handshake to handshake.

Of course that’s all pretty much bullshit. Most of the state is a suburb of Boston and if you cannot afford Boston TV you can go ahead and wear out all the snow tires you want bouncing around from to town to town, but you’re most likely gonna be toast in the end.

Still, the hand to hand campaigning did count here and the mass media side of it was still about telling New Hampshire a story… with a big build-up and a final starring role for the state itself. Flinty N.H. will only blow up the political world for never say quit candidates who fully respect its special rules. Nikki forgot that when she blew off a High Noon New Hampshire debate after her failure in Iowa, offering folks here modern risk management instead of delicious high drama.

In the bigger picture, what New Hampshire most importantly provided in the Presidential primary calendar was the narrow canyon would-be POTUS’S were forced to ride through; the perfect spot for a political ambush and the hard bumps that would truly a candidate at just the moment when the campaign stakes were at the highest imaginable. That made it great fun for the media to cover and wonderful fun for candidates to campaign in, unless of course you were the front-runner. Then it was an acid-test.

But not anymore.

This year New Hampshire’s Ambush Canyon was pounded flat into a four lane expressway. Trump phoned it in, and it worked. It appears that Donald Trump may be the only candidate in a contested New Hampshire Presidential Primary who has never spent the night here. His NH strategy was simple: throw a few turds and then, wheels up!

To be fair, it was the Biden White House that drew the first deadly blood. They killed off New Hampshire’s Democratic primary this year and probably forever. Joe’s Brain Trust probably figured it was the smart move to take ol’ Ambush Canyon right off the road map for their wobbly incumbent by adopting a new, more modern and diverse calendar, neatly built around nearly ambush proof states like South Carolina, union-run Nevada, and big Michigan.

So New Hampshire now exits the political stage, not by turning a Presidential race upside down with an upset, but with a quiet whimper.

There will be no joy in Dixville Notch tonight. RIP Granite primary.