Political Theater

We went out for dinner in Manchester tonight - unusual for us, especially just the two of us, but Tracy had a coupon (she always wins coupons) - and caught Radio Row at the Radisson, Occupy NH Primary across the street, then drove home via the debate at St. A's in our town.  We've been downtown in the height of primary season in many other years, and I'd forgotten how odd it is to see so many people clearly from around here in the restaurants and talking earnestly on the streets - junior movers-and-shakers who wait on the campaign and media people with Important Haircuts.  Nothing objectionable about this crowd, I just can tell at a glance I don't want to talk with them.  These are people who sell ideas, rather than having ideas, and they know more about sales than thinking.  Not that they see themselves that way, of course.  They largely think they have entered a cultural backwater where people don't know What's What and Who's Who.

Which is true, I suppose, in one sense.

But the energy was a bit subdued downtown.  Most of radio row was empty - most folks heading over to St. A's, I imagine.  Across the street, Occupy was poorly attended - though they did have some drumming!  Wouldn't want NH to miss out on the full experience. But the prominent multi-stickered cars had Mass plates...Mass plates...NYYankees decal...Yeah, you folks really didn't do your research, did you?

I think "Occupy" has become a brand name, because it's generic, unofficial.  Every small group with a liberal bent had attached "Occupy" to their posters.  You couldn't do that with Tea Party two years ago, because major media would swoop on you and try to bait you into saying something stupid which they could play nationally, pretending that you represented everyone else.  So the Tea Party got pretty good at enforcing its boundaries.  With Occupy, only independent media tries that.  Though Fox did try a couple of times, quite successfully, I heard.

An Obama group was out at St. A's with trombones and saxophones, playing some bluesy thing - that deserves a little credit.

Just not as big a deal as previous years.  Our own lack of effort may be part of that.

Political writer Walter Shapiro, quoted by James Fallows at The Atlantic. 

As a political reporter, I am prepared to offer a spirited defense of New Hampshire's outsized role in presidential politics. Nowhere else in the nation do voters display such fidelity to old-fashioned civic obligations.... New Hampshire may be a living monument to participatory democracy, but what in God's name is the justification for making the Iowa caucuses the campaign equivalent of the book of Genesis?

Complain all you want, but without NH, the Jon Huntsman's of the world have no chance at all to even attempt to run for president.  Wealth, and/or coming from a big state, already are dominant factors.  You want to make that worse?  Maybe the first primary should just be a single county.