New Page 1

Three New Books Give Balanced View of the N. H. Primary

Review by DEAN DEXTER

Where else but in New Hampshire during Presidential Primary season would one find a young political activist so familiar with the routine of personally meeting candidates that he would choose to sleep through a morning coffee for a famous U.S. Senator?

Or, after a reporter asks who he’s supporting for president, hear an Ivy League student leader admit: “Only in New Hampshire would I be asked to endorse someone.”

Or, see a distinguished governor from a large state, greeting North Country mill workers as they come to work, and “every third person is telling him to go to hell,” because “they’re just getting up in the morning…and somebody’s bothering them, trying to stick their hand out” in front of TV cameras

These scenes come from three new books on the First in the Nation primary, published this fall by four of perhaps the most qualified experts on the quadrennial contest, which this year will be held on January 27^th.

The first, by the late Governor Hugh Gregg and coauthor Secretary of State Bill Gardner, has turned out to be a kind of last holiday gift to the people of New Hampshire from one who spent over half a century promoting New Hampshire, and working to protect the Primary. It was published shortly after Gregg’s death in September.

Although each has a distinctive twist on the contest, all three books nevertheless emphasize what is without a doubt the Primary’s greatest strength and most compelling reason for its protection in the face of ever-present forces threatening to do it in. That is, it simply forces candidates for the nation’s highest office to meet everyday people in their living rooms, in their schools, and on their Main Streets, and to otherwise work for their support on a personal, one-on-one, “grass roots” level.

That Charles Brereton, author of Primary Politics (Peter Randall, Portsmouth, 198 pages, indexed) was able to so easily sleep in as his hosts entertained South Dakota Sen. George McGovern at an 8:00 a.m. coffee was because Brereton had already sized up the senator at an appearance the day before. (He was unimpressed).

Brereton’s book, his fourth on the subject, is a balanced defense of the Primary, and includes scenes like when then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was being driven through Claremont by N.H. House Democratic Leader Peter Burling. Clinton tells Burling he should contact Walmart, where his wife Hillary was a board member at the time, to help get business for a local manufacturer. The effort backfired, however, when the “Comeback Kid” was accused in a Boston newspaper story of “swapping jobs for support from local officials and voters.”

Why? New Hampshire (Resources-NH, Nashua, 333 pages, indexed), the collaboration by the late Governor Gregg and Gardner is, as one might expect, rich in history and anecdotes of the major candidates, and that odd mix of often eccentric characters who also plunk down their $1000 checks to get their names on the N.H. ballot, for whatever reason.

Gardner says his work on the project with the late governor was one of the great experiences of his life.

Like Brereton, Gregg and Gardner ask if not the N.H. Primary, what? Regional primaries? Media campaigns? Will anybody ever see a candidate for president in a one-on-one, real-life situation again without it?

That a Dartmouth College student like Josh Stern could be courted for his endorsement by a major White House contender is as much a picture of local democracy as it is of a cagey state legislator making $100 a year who nobody in New York, Los Angeles, or Washington has ever heard of, but who carefully holds out his endorsement until the last minute, making headlines in the process. There is something delicious about that, according to Gregg and Gardner, and should be to every American. It just might be the last stand against the celebrity, media-driven politics of the 21^st Century.

Gregg and Gardner in their research also discovered the first national Presidential convention in Baltimore was launched by New Hampshire Jacksonians in the early 1800s, and provide valuable biographical facts about long forgotten N.H. legislators who established the Primary at the turn of the century. They of course give due credit to the late Concord attorney, Richard Upton, as the father of the Primary’s modern incarnation.

St. Anselm Professor Dante Scala’s Stormy Weather, the New Hampshire Primary and Presidential Politics (Palgrave-MacMillan, New York, 218 pages, end notes, indexed) is a more academic analysis of the primary and mostly focuses on Democratic party primary history and strategies. His memorable picture of Virginia Governor Doug Wilder at the gates of a Gorham paper mill, trying to assess his candidacy for President among impatient, hard working people living from paycheck to paycheck, cut to the bone of what makes the state’s primary a treasure to American democracy. Scala says he focused on the Democrats because he rightly did not anticipate a GOP primary in 2004 and plans to address N.H. Republican contests in another book, slated for 2008.

Each book with its own style brings a valuable, unsentimental perspective to the “making of the president” every four years in New Hampshire, where it all begins. One cannot fully appreciate New Hampshire without an understanding of its politics and the role it has played in the lives of each who have become President of the United States since 1952, and of those – many from the Granite State – who have helped them along the way.

Dean Dexter is a free-lance writer and resident of Meredith and Concord. He is a former chairman of the Laconia Republican City Committee.

_______________

This review appeared in The (Laconia) Citizen on January 7, 2004 and the Portsmouth Herald, January 10, 2004.

Posted: Saturday, January 10, 2004

Return to NH Commentary Home Page