New Hampshire primaries 1992 - 14 February 1992

On Tuesday next, the newspapers will be telling us that the eyes of the world are on New Hampshire. To bring that well-worn phrase a little nearer the truth, let's say that about half the qualified American voters may be looking to New Hampshire and since only half of them vote, even in a presidential election, that means that one adult American in four will for sure be taking an interest anyway in the primary election in that beautiful New England state, which as we've mentioned before, ought to have not even the faintest piping little voice in saying who is going to be the next Democrat candidate for President. But it's the first primary, the first beauty contest and magnetises the national interest, way beyond the political importance of New Hampshire itself.

You'll notice I don't even mention New Hampshire's lifeless weight at the Republican convention, for we're all going on the unquestioned assumption that Mr Bush, unless he keeps keeling over, as he did in Tokyo, is like Nixon, like Eisenhower, like Hoover before him, the inevitable, the 100% sure thing as the Republican nominee. Sharp little boys with a memory or rather sharp little old gents will remember, however, that whereas Ike and Nixon went roaring back for a second term, with a bigger landslide than the first time round, Mr Herbert Hoover collapsed before the first onslaught of a very unlikely presidential candidate, a pampered only son, a momma's boy, very upper crust and not very good lawyer, elected to the governorship of New York state by a kind of fluke. An adequate governor but not anybody you'd want on the national stage, especially when the nation was sinking into the pit of depression. A man who, the great and wise pundit Walter Lippmann said, is an amiable man who wants very much to be president but shows no qualification whatsoever for the post. Well I got carried away there with the unfitness, the weakness, the unsuitability of Mr Hoover's unlikely conqueror, ex-Eton and Oxford, I'm sorry, I mean ex-Groton and Harvard, a background that in America works very much against your ever being elected to national or even regional office. Well, his name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt – was he a surprise.

Well on Tuesday we all know that Mr Bush, who the worse things get has a harder time shaking off or hiding his blue-blazer-and-slacks, preppy, Yale background. Mr Bush is, without doubt whatsoever, going to win the Republican vote in New Hampshire, very handsomely indeed – 60, 65% maybe. He has nobody of any weight running against him. Well, only the old, the young Irish-American curmudgeon, Pat Buchanan and he's no threat – unless there are more people than we know, who cherish far right, downright white Anglo-Saxon nostalgic prejudices that they don't care to reveal except in the secrecy of the voting booth.

However, let's go over to the Democrats who have demonstrated in the past two weeks only how dangerous it is to take bets on a field of runners much before the race is run. There are in new Hampshire five Democrats, all eager to be president. Looking around you at the turmoil of the world – Armenia to Haiti, Korea to Algeria – don't you ever marvel at the idea that there are men who actually want to be president? I have a friend who says in November he's going to vote for anyone who doesn't want to be president. All right, we have five Democrats, all in these last few days going into their last act of trying to fool the people by starting sentences with, "When I am President…", or "The first thing I shall do on the 20th January 1993…".

How many of those five have a ghost of a chance of being nominated, that's to say of going on after New Hampshire into other primaries and then on to the convention? Just two. You've heard before about Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, Indeed a week or two ago I gave you a little sketch history of Arkansas, on the off chance that Governor Clinton would run away with New Hampshire and be a shoo-in for the nomination. Since then two events or nasty rumours have come along to blot his record or at least to give many of his early supporters second thoughts.

First there was the case of the lady, giving her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose I should call her the lady, who claims she was Governor Clinton's mistress for 12 years. To which, after assuring us that he and his gutsy, attractive wife had settled any marriage problems and were a happy trusting pair, to which claim Governor Clinton said apparently, effectively, nonsense. Well it seems he carried that hurdle. The polls showed him leading the other four Democratic pretenders. Then a reporter on the Wall Street Journal did some careful digging and came up with a story which led to the charge that the governor had somehow evaded the draft during the Vietnam War, or rather that he had taken advantage of a clause in the Act which allowed him, as a graduate student, to go back and complete his second year at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar on the promise that he would come home to the University of Arkansas Law School and join the Officers' Training Corps.

Well he didn't do it, he went on to Yale and he said that when he realised how many of his good friends had died in the war, he let himself be drawn in the lottery of the draft and was lucky enough to come up with a number that would never be called. It's a tricky, complicated story but even in the governor's version, it does not have "the ring of truth". I quoted there one of the other candidates and the man who dare characterise the governor's story in that fashion because he had a leg blown off in Vietnam. He is Senator Kerrey of Nebraska and he's given practically no chance at all of going on successfully after New Hampshire. Another man who did serve and therefore isn't afraid to suggest doubts about Governor Clinton's story is Senator Harkin of Iowa, forthright, old-time New Deal liberal, who is very amusing when he knocks the man he regularly calls George Herbert Walker Bush. Otherwise he has not disclosed any qualifications to push aside Governor Clinton and the governor's big rival, Mr formerly Senator Tsongas from Massachusetts.

Before I finish with Governor Clinton, I ought to say that the smoke of those two nasty rumours about him has not dispersed, has deposited on him and his campaign a cloud of doubt and for the first time has damaged his standing in the polls. As I talk, he has lost six or seven points and is now running second to Paul Tsongas. And who is Paul Tsongas?

I should say at once that he spells his name T-s-o-n-g-a-s, Tsongas. It's a Greek name, He comes from Massachusetts and is a liberal. Not the best omens, unless God's in his Heaven and working in the most mysterious way. For it was only four years ago that Mr Bush slaughtered a liberal from Massachusetts with a Greek name, Dukakis. Is it likely that in all the 252 million Americans in 50 states, the Democrats can find their saviour in the only other Greek liberal from Massachusetts who declared for the presidency? Anyway, Mr Tsongas was in the United States Senate, an effective senator, more of a commonsensical than an ideological liberal. Then he developed cancer, he retired from the Senate, had a rough year or two, maintains as the doctors do, that he's cured and came back fighting this year and there he is.

You may have noticed that I have not talked politics about any of the candidates, not even about George Bush. By which I mean I haven't even mentioned programmes, policies, how to deal with poverty, day-care, crime, the health service, the deficit. Oddly I don't recall any of the candidates going on about the deficit at all. It has come by the Republicans to be taken for granted and by the Democrats. It's a big, bad ogre you expect to go away if your policies are approved and followed.

I've not talked politics because I believe they bore all foreign audiences but more, because I believe it's not what people vote for in the first place. The first place being New Hampshire. And pray if this election isn't about politics, what is it about? Of course, it's about politics but what I'm saying is something that may be outrageous to some people. When you have a bunch of runners, a collection of candidates who seem to think much alike, none of whom comes over as a very positive advocate of certain beliefs, when there is no one with a charismatic personal style – and that's the situation with the Democrats – then I do believe people tend to go for the man because they like his voice or his eyes or his looks and vote against him for the same reason.

There is a charismatic Democrat, the only one extant, who can magnetise an audience and make them weep, his name is Mario Cuomo and he's the Governor of New York. He says he's not running, so in New Hampshire there's a sort of organised protest vote, a write-in vote in his favour. If it turns out to be considerable, it might make him think again. But he will have to think quickly for every state with a primary has a deadline date for entry and some deadlines have passed. On the whole I think the most interesting things to watch out for in New Hampshire are to see if, on the Republican side, Pat Buchanan can raise enough of a scare vote to frighten Mr Bush and if, on the Democratic side, nobody breaks clean of the pack, not visibly enough anyway, to banish the dreaded thought of Cuomo changing his mind and making the supreme sacrifice for all our sakes.

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