O-dministration, O-Kaying images, O-verview, O-ptimism - the Obama beginning

Many are the melancholy or indignant post-mortems emerging as Bush's days draw to a close. Oh, how glad are we all to see the back of Bush.
Obama, awaiting inauguration and setting up his administration, stands in stern contrast to the invocational charm of the campaign. Well may he be stern. He has much to put to rights and already the dissent and criticism festers from the Right. As Paul Krugman says in the NY Times, the GOP needs to stop whining and look at the mess it is in.

Meanwhile, we quietly shimmer in anticipation for the Obama takeover and to see a country with this impressive family in the White House. I gather it is called the White House simply because it is white, made of white marble. Somehow the name seems as inept as it is unimaginative now that it is to hold a black incumbent.

What we will have to understand is that the Obamas are going to be given not only the unprecedented physical protection that they require because of the disgrace of death threats they have been receiving from the racist underclass of America, but also they will be spin doctored and marketed with much greater care and caution than any of their White House predecessors. Michelle's caustic ad libs will have to go. She is a role model now who makes Oprah almost insignificant. The strategists are working out the balance between gravitas and glamour, puppies and politics, not to mention comparisons with Kennedys and Clintons.

Good luck to the lot of 'em. We and they are in for an interesting and, I hope, uplifting time.

Sidin' with Biden

Now, I know Biden has been around for decades and is a respectable Democratic senator from, uh, that corporate tax haven state of Delaware. I was keen to hear him speak when I was in New Hampshire, but his dates and whereabouts never quite worked out for me. He was on a slimmer campaign budget than some and did not tour as extensively. Not like Clinton or Obama.

So, not hearing him in the flesh, I could only join his newslist and keep an eye on him. He did not fire me up. Not like Bill Richardson.

But he seemed civilized, seasoned, intelligent enough... There is a long tradition of good Catholic men in liberal politics. I have time for them.

The main thing that impressed me about Biden and impresses me now is the silver hair and Hollywood features - he looks like someone who has come direct from Central Casting.

Perchance this makes him just right for the role.
White man for the white vote. Restrained and conventional for the middle-of-the-roaders. Photogentic for the media.
He is a fine piece of political window dressing.

Hillary - racing like a thoroughbred

The Iowa caucuses are just a couple of months away. So is the New Hampshire primary, come to think of it. The year has been racing forth mercilessly.
I continue to admire the incredible stamina of the leading candidates in sustaining the pace required to get the message across, meet the people, raise the profile…
Hillary now is so solidly in the lead that one has to fear that the opponents’ dirty tricks campaign are around the next corner. It has been a pleasure to watch her, the thoroughbred of political candidates, pull out into first place and keep the pace up without a backward glance.
Obama, who has never missed a chance to have a snipe at Hillary, has ramped up his television advertising in a last-minute bid to catch up with Hillary. But, last month he failed to show up for a Democratic debate in Iowa. What a mistake. I am not sure what his reason was but it was a golden opportunity for Hillary to shine – and she did.
The more she is diligently and consistently out there, the more the people are realising that she has depth and experience. She is spectacularly well informed and, oh my, she is disciplined and she is strong.

I have not mentioned John Edwards for ages – because he really isn’t worth a mention. He has campaigned with great confidence and determination yet again. But he simply is not “it”. The daddy working for the mill patter now is tired and no one will forget that $400 haircut. It was the lethal misstep. That is all it takes in politics.

Obama has not made one, but there is still time. He is the Howard Dean of this primary – boosted by noisy young. But the young are flighty. I’ll take a punt that half his support base has not even registered to vote.

Hillary has had a couple of close shaves, if one is to believe the beat-ups of Fox news. But, the more solidly she leads the pack, the more respectful the detractors seem to be becoming, as if readying themselves to accept her as president.
Even the old chestnut of how “polarising” Hillary is has not been getting much ink in the media.

Ah, yes, things are looking pretty good.

Great Scott, it's about faith

Another hiatus in the candidate visit business, but unsurprising following the debate.
Hillary is the first to be making a return trip to New Hampshire - heading up north to Hanover to "host a conversation about expanding stem cell research and moving our nation forward on important scientific research and medical issues".
I am invited to attend, but I simply can't get up there, as much as I would enjoy this issue and crowd. Hanover is the town where Dartmouth College is located. It is also the town in which satirical travel writer Bill Bryson chose to settle following his Lost Continent travels seeking the perfect American town. It is a very pretty college town.
However, I won't be there on Friday.

Hillary is clearly a force for medical progress and the advancement of science - unlike the Republicans with their rash of creationists and pro-lifers.
But even she has been dragged into the faith game which has become an unhealthy aspect of this presidential race. It seems that placating the Bible-thumpers is de rigeur. This is a scarily religious country.

I can understand why Hillary chose to join the very religious Barack Obama, who belongs to a rather powerful black church, in doing the old religious tell-all on television recently. I didn't watch. Couldn't bear to. I just understood that, with the obsessive Christianity of contemporary America, Hillary had to show her religious side. She has always been something of a church-goer. Nonetheless, it saddened me that waving the faith flag is necessary at all.

I was grateful to Boston Globe columnist, Scott Lehigh, who summed it up thus in Piety on Parade, a magnificent opinion piece which really merits reading in full:

I'd prefer a candidate inclined to keep quiet about his faith, rather than wear it on his sleeve. Or even one who held with the philosopher Herbert Spencer: Whether God exists is intellectually unknowable.

I'd rather hear about a hopeful's earthly justifications for his policy positions, about the real world values that guide her. When a candidate says, "My religion teaches me . . . " what he or she is really saying is: I'm about to base my answer in a realm that helps me barricade it against rational argument.

Do we really want a president who relies on faith more than facts in making his decisions? Or who thinks he has the imprimatur of God as he moves forward?

On being a small fish...

So much for depending on my own kind to get things done here.
As requested by its editor, I made application through the Union Leader for tickets to the June 3 Democratic Debate up the road in Manchester. They asked for some personal details to which end I had to use my husband's name since they seemed to wish for legitimate NH voter credentials.
No tickets were forthcoming.
Indeed, no word was forthcoming. Nada. Silence.

Perturbed, nay, gobsmacked, I contacted the Hillary campaign who directed me to the New Hampshire Democrats' office, the helpful press officer of which directed me to the Debate's co-host, the NH television station, WMUR. What a friendly and charming response - but no tickets. Their quota all went yesterday. Yesterday!

How frustrating is this!
I realise with a jolt what a spoiled media person I am. I am used to people knowing who I am. I am accustomed to people actually wanting me to be at events or to picking up a phone and having doors open. I am used to a diary bulging with in invitations.
But, as much as I feel at home here, I am not on home turf. I have no strings to pull.

At least I am carrying my media union card.
So, I followed the WMUR advice and have appealed to the Debate's other co-host, CNN - this time asking for the only access left, media accreditation.
My regret in this context is that being among my own kind will distance me from the special people of NH, the discerning voters, who are, to a large extent, what this blog is all about. Then again, being with my own kind in another country would be an interesting study in its own right.
And, of course, it would give one a yet closer look at the candidates - which can't be bad.
My fate, however, rests upon the kindness hands of strangers.
They don't owe me a thing.
I can only wait and see.

Meanwhile, there has been good news.
Hillary will be back in NH next week and she is scheduled to do a town walk in Nashua!
I will be there with bells on.

Bill Richardson's six-day plan

First things first. The increasingly controversial date for the New Hampshire Primary was the subject of Bill Richardson's introductory remarks. He'd just heard that it was going to be on January 8 - in response to the impertinent move forward of Florida from March to the last Tuesday in January.
"You should be the first Primary," declared Richardson, adding that this sudden scrunch of Primary dates put great pressure on the campaigners.
New Hampshire house parties are very informal and interactive - and immediately someone pointed out that NH is first "by law". Assorted very early dates were jovially suggested.

Then the New Mexico Governor launched into his address, prefacing it with some of the ways in which he believed he was the most outstandingly qualified of all candidates for the presidency. These were not only his administrative experience as a state governor, but his extensive CV as a Congressman and the country's Secretary of Energy - not to mention his time as a UN diplomat wherein he had liaised with leaders in world trouble spots such as Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Sudan.

From these experiences he had learned the essence of making peace with enemies and turning them into friends and, indeed, the most pressing thing he'd do as new President would be to bring people together in a bi-partisan thrust to terminate the "nightmare" of the Iraq War.

As a succinct format, he cited his policies in the form of "six issues and what I would do with my first six days in the White House".
Day 1 would be Iraq. He would not only withdraw the forces but he would install diplomacy and an all-Muslim peacekeeping force and apply some of the $400 billion war into "the domestic needs" of Iraq.


Day 2, Richardson would dedicate to Energy Independence, liberating the country from the 60 per cent oil import statistic and the "stranglehold" that "unfriendly" countries have over the USA. He would call on private and public investment in a blitz of auto greening with all cars at 50mpg. "I don't care what Detroit says," he challenged. He added a list of energy alteratives including green buildings, solar roofs on schools...
"You gotta sacrifice. It's a sense of community because energy efficiency is for the common good. We generate 25 per cent of the world's pollution," he said.
Interestingly, his state, New Mexico, is the only US state which abides by the Kyoto Protocol. This man has a track record.
He gave fulsome credit to Al Gore for his service in informing the country about the urgency of environmental reform, adding: "Al, stay out of the running."


Day 3, said Richardson, would be for education. Here he absolutely soared in recognition of what the US really needs to bring itself back to the future - science and math! India and Korea have left the US, and the rest of the world, behind in these vital subjects. Australia needs to pick up its socks, too. Richardson is on the ball in knowing that this is the foundation of a knowledge economy. He also spoke of languages and, particularly, the arts - to engage "and stimulate the mind". Yes!

Day 4 he allocated to his National Health Care plan to which he gave scant outline, since, he explained, the complexities and funding thereof requires lengthy extrapolation.


Day 5 was for his job-generation plan. "The Democrats would be the party of economic growth and science and math," he underlined. "The Democrats have been the party of the poor, which I endorse, but do you what what? We have forgotten the middle class."
He went on to speak of tax incentives for new technology and employment iniatives with an emphasis on renewable energy, technology and aviation. "The future is renewable energy," he reiterated.
When someone interjected a question about nuclear power, he acknowledged that it was non-pollutant but still worried about disposal of its by-products. It was not an energy option of his choice.

Day 6 would be devoted to "restating our commitment to civil rights". Richardson strongly supported "a woman's right to choose". "If you have different sexual orientation, I'll be on your side," he added. He sought "fair immigration laws and not that wall - that's not American".
"We're a nation of immigrants," he emphasised, suggesting that immigration regulations should incorporate speaking English and passing background checks.

The American voting system was also a target. Only 48 per cent of Americans voted in the last election. "One of the problems is that we don't trust the ballot," he said. "I want a shift back to paper."
The New Hampshirites interjected that they had a paper trail here, despite an electronic ballot.

Richardson finished by saying that he knew he was an "underdog" in the Democratic Presidential candidate polls "but I've got nine months to go - and a lot of house parties".

And, just to add levity to his list of credentials, he confided that "I'm holder of the world handshaking record - 13,000 hands in 8 hours. That record used to belong to Teddy Roosevelt".

The party guests were keen to question the New Mexico Governor - and threw some tough ones at him, particularly about tax, Iraq, mental health and health funding. He fielded them all with amiable ease, at home on all issues, it seemed.



And he added some interesting snippets - insight about North Korea which he has visited no less than six times and which he still finds very different in thinking.
He told of talking to President Bush about negotiations with North Korea and the way in which using China as an intermediary was a mistake since the North Koreans hate China.
Bush replied: "Bill, I don't talk to countries that exhibit bad behaviour."
Richardson retorted: "Pretty soon you're only going to be talking to the Vatican."
He half-expected an angry response from the President, he said. But no. George Bush thought it was funny.

The Richardson campaign aides were keen to get him moving along - next stop an interview with CNN. Richardson, however, was reluctant to short-change these voters and his lingering to answer personal questions, shake hands and sign his book was clearly agitating his clock-watching aides, as we slipped quietly out the door ahead of him.

A good man, I'd say, who came across poorly in the Democrats' television debate. Gun supporter or not, he shone as an example of the extremely high quality of candidate being fielded by the American Democrats. If only politics was dominated by such people. If only.

Governor Richardson on house party tour

The house party is one of the particular characteristics of New Hampshire primary campaigns and it turns out to be Governor Bill Richardson's favourite form of exposure to the voter. Or, so he said, after being introduced to the crowd of locals who had gathered at the home of John and Marie Anne Knowles in the neighbouring township of Hudson. The Knowleses both are elected members of the New Hampshire State Legislature.

John Knowles had kindly agreed to squeeze me in to the already well-subscribed party in their pleasant, book-lined home set on a sweeping cul de sac in a rather gracious and spacious modern housing estate cut into the New Hampshire woodlands. Richardson is not a front-runner at this stage, but he is a former Ambassador to the UN and US Energy Secretary and most definitely a superior presidential candidate. Interestingly, he also is half-Latino. His Mexican mother graced him with swarthy good looks which, frustratingly, are very hard to convey in photographs.

It seemed a particularly civilized group of thinking people at the party - one felt that one would like each one of them if given the opportunity. The Knowleses had turned on a spread of sweet and savoury snacks along with wine, soft drinks and, amazingly, casks of hot coffee from Dunkin' Donuts.

Candidates usually are running late on these hectic campaign schedules and, indeed, Richardson has been criss-crossing NH at a rate of knots for three days. But he was only a few minutes late to the party and a round of applause went up as he entered the living room.

Websites and electronic friends

In this lull between visits, Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign has been beavering away in Manchester - getting the office humming along, the campaign outreach liaised and, most importantly of all, the NH campaign website up and running.
It is full of juicy details about the groundswell of support following Hillary's five NH visits and the plans afoot for a Hillary Day of Action on May 12.

Meanwhile, one can see a very different support base growing on My Space. This community is so vast that no one can afford not to be a member. Even I have a page. Hillary and the other candidates most emphatically are on board. It is interesting to see the growth of "friends" in that arena. Hillary had 52199 this morning. John Edwards had 30276. Meanwhile, John McCain had 25367 and Rudi Giuliani, with several aggressive My Space sites, seemed to have only 192. Giuliani's unofficial site had some pretty ugly anti-Democrat material. Hillary's has this:





The Republican Debate is happening tonight and the Repub candidates, all 10 of them, are out and about claiming their moment in the sun. Mitt Romney, the movie star-handsome Mormon with only 14186 friends on My Space, scored an airing on Jay Leno last night showing what a smooth operator he is with his well-scripted jokes and constant family references. He's a "family values" man and recommended that America "look at my wife and me to see American values". Jay did corner him on a question about the Mormon history of racial discrimination to which Romney replied: "One of my best friends is in Ghana bringing people into the church right now". Shudder.

Only in America, eh. Like this whole fascinating process.

And the debate verdict is...

There they stood behind their oddly tapering lecterns under the kitsch, over-arty red, white and blue MSNBC debate set - Hillary Clinton, the tiny one, Barack Obama, the tall one, and then John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden - and who the hell is that other fellow?

I'd never heard of Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska.
Well, we all know him now. The man who said he felt like a potplant perched at the edge of the lineup turned out to be the star of the debate. Talk about fresh blood and fresh perspective. He is an old-fashioned sage. A no-bull man! A realist.
Terrorism, he asserted, "has been with civilization from the beginning, and it will be there till the end. We're going to be as successful fighting terrorism as we are fighting drugs with the war. It doesn't work. What you have to do is to begin to change the whole foreign policy."
On Iran and nuclear threats, he noted that the US was the greatest violator of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. "We signed a pledge that we would begin to disarm, and we're not doing it. We're expanding our nukes. Who the hell are we going to nuke?" he blustered.
He also said this:
"We have no important enemies, We've got to deal with the rest of the world as equals. Who are we afraid of? We spend more on defence than any other country...the military controls not only the budget, it also controls our culture." Wow!

Straw polls following the debate have given Gravel a surprising surge.
On Daily Kos, he has zoomed to a 10 per cent vote, ahead of Kucinich, Biden, Richardson and Dodd - but behind Hillary, Obama and Edwards.

I was pleased with Hillary Clinton, however. She was my winner. She has a confident clarity. Her voice has a headmistress timbre, so we pay attention. She is emotionally controlled - calm and rational. She also is comprehensively informed on any topic you throw her. She can think on her feet. She is diplomatic, always knowing what not to say as well as what to say. She has been criticised for this, but, hell, that is what politics is all about.
She also has been endlessly criticised for insufficient mea culpa about voting for the War on Iraq. How many times does she have to regret it? How many times does she have to say that, if she knew then what she knew now, she would never have done so? Anyway, she said it all again - and was criticised all over again by the likes of Edwards and Kucinich.
It was a rather delicious irony to note that she was the most generous-spirited among the candidates, ready to give credit to others.
Oh, yes, she stood right out.

John Edwards lost ground for me in the debate. He says his $400 haircut was "a mistake which has been remedied now". How? He paid the campaign fund back? That is really not a remedy to the primping vanity of $400 haircuts. Edwards went on to defend his "privileged" millionaire lifestyle by claiming not to have forgotten his roots and went into a Southern boy, Down Home childhood tale of how the family left a restaurant when his millworker father realised he could not afford to pay its prices. I think we have had enough of these cornball anecdotes from Edwards. I, for one, have heard them all before. Furthermore, he was the only candidate to suggest that he felt a need to consult his "Lord" .

Dennis Kucinich also lost ground. I had respected his uncompromising leftist views - but in the debate, he showed a bitchy streak I did not like, sniping at his peers, glancing at Hillary and saying "apologies aren't enough". What the hell? Apologies are enough - and forgiveness is all. Kucinich also admitted to being a gun-owner. Hillary was one of the few who indicated never having owned a weapon, at the same time reiterating careful placations to the mighty gun lobby. Everyone seems to do this.

Bill Richardson is known as the darling of the gun lobby. He is a Westerner and he owns guns - but thinks the screening processes for gun purchase are lacking, as evidenced by Cho and the Virginia Tech shooting.
I found Richards a bit bombastic, something of a hothead and too fond of speaking in lists. From this quaint pressure-cooker appearance, I wouldn't put him in the White House.

Joe Biden is charming and he looks the way a president should look. When asked about his greatest mistake, he said it was in "overestimating the competence of this administration" and "stupid enough to believe that I could influence George W Bush's thinking". He brought the house down when, accused of "uncontrolled verbosity" and being a "gaffe machine" and asked if he would have the self-control for the role of president, he said simply "yes" - and not another word. Silence.

Chris Dodd pointed out his considerable qualifications for the job of president but was underwhelming in debate, especially when he spoke on civil unions versus same-sex marriage. He is for the former and against the latter. I liked his idea of diplomacy rather than war, and his quote: "This administration treats diplomacy as if it were a gift to our opponent; a sign of weakness, not a sign of strength".

Barack Obama was my biggest loser. He seemed extremely nervous, which is forgivable. But he also seemed arrogant. He never makes a speech that does not mention his wife and children, which is beginning to grate - and, gratuitously, he mentioned them again. His big mistake in my book was when he went to town on Iran, showing that he has swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the current media campaign to turn Iran into an immediate threat. It is rather reminiscent of the Iraq and "weapons of mass destruction" campaign. Obama said that he believed that Iran was a nuclear threat as well as the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas and therefore was a threat to the security of the USA.
My conclusion is that Obama is, indeed, the young and inexperienced candidate - and it showed. He is simply not ready for the presidency.

Hillary is.

At the parish pump

New Hampshire has yet to set a date for its Primary. It prefers to give short notice, especially now that the other states are breathing down its neck. Florida, for instance, thinks it should have greater prestige in the national Primary business and it has moved is Primary date from March to seven days after the NH Primary or February 5 - whichever comes first. California is champing at the bit to raise its electoral profile and it is aiming for February 5. So is New York. Nevada, meanwhile, has announced a Democrats-only contest on January 19.
What is going on?
Already the businesses of Primaries and Caucuses are confusing - but why can't the various states leave the tradition alone?
Well, whatever the policies involved in the political race, whatever the issues with the incumbent Administration, it is all about dollars. This is America, after all. Presidents might administer, but dollars rule.

The candidates have been raising vast amounts of money. Quite a bit of that is spent in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, who are the traditional early states wherein the candidates spend a lot of time coming face-to-face with the people. That is what is special about New Hampshire. It's about scale, the fact that it is a parish pump state. As such, it has always been considered something of a barometer to the nation's political mood.
In massive, broadly-spread population areas such as California, this sort of grass roots interaction is not feasible. The pollies are spread thin. So, they have to depend on advertising. And this is what those states want. They want election advertising revenue.

Policy and person

Hillary Clinton had made her first official policy speech - right here in chilly, spring-challenged New Hampshire. Oh, my, it is cold and nasty right now - one sleety snow storm soon to be followed by an even more extensive and miserable nor'easter bringing a foot or more of snow.
Wicked weather does not get in the way of the NH Primary. Hillary chose to give her policy speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Of course, it gained lots of serious press coverage. The highest-profile presidential aspirant is rarely short of press coverage. A fleet of journalists and cameramen is on tour with her. She is big news.

She offered a 10-point plan to reform the government but the headline the media extracted, and rightly so, was her adamant stand against people who leave their roles in political administration to become lobbyists.
She expanded on this at our meeting, saying that one of her priorities was to get te best-quality people working in the White House and to get rid of that seedy business of "no-bid contracts". Of course, she was speaking of Halliburton. She added: "Really, it's a stunning record of cronyism and corruption, incompetence and deception and it has shaken the people's faith in our government," she said.
She added that it was hard to get accurate information from the incumbent government which "stonewalls and misleads".

I was talking to one of the "I'm A Health Care Voter" people after Hillary's event and she was whining that Hillary did not answer the questions people had asked. Was this woman at the same meeting as I was? It just goes to show the way people read into things what they want. One finds it a lot in journalism. People are capabable of the most perverse misinterpretations of perfectly simple things - and they will ring and accuse you of writing quite the opposite of what you have clearly written. They are usually argumentative and negative people who operate from some stubborn mindset. This woman was of the ilk. I was gobsmacked.
Like most journalists, I am acutely aware of politicians who evade answers with artful sidetracks and I had just been marvelling at the thorough way in which Hillary Clinton had, indeed, answered the questions - including a deeply challenging question on farm subsidies. This is a crucial and complex issue. Hillary took her time extrapolating on the situation and its sensitivity, recognising small farmers as the core to the quality of life of rural America. Apparently there are 34,000 family farms in her state of New York. She suggested alternative conservation subsidies for such farms to help farmers to stay on the land "and be stewards of the environment" while allowing other countries also to grow crops.

She pulled no punches on the pro-choice issue - citing the Chinese government's enforcement of abortion and the Rumanian enforcement of a five-child policy as historic examples of the obscene folly of government control over women's bodies.
"No American wants police state interference with these personal decisions," said she.

At the end of these community events, it is traditional that the candidate presses flesh and chats informally to the people. I went to a lot of these events at the last NH Primary, but this was the first time I saw people being kept behind a rope. Hillary strolled the perimeter of the rope, rather like the Queen on walkabout. Then again, it was more the rock star scene since people were thrusting books and campaign posters at her for autographing, which she did in good cheer. I eased my way to the front and proffered a hand. As it happens, she has a lovely handshake - a warm, soft-skinned and dry hand with a grip that is neither weak nor fierce. I introduced myself and said I hoped that, when she was president, the outside world would be exposed to some less rabid Americana on ubiquitous Fox News. Clearly, it was a comment out of the ordinary and she asked me to repeat it, pulling my hand towards her as if to hear better. I repeated. Still holding my hand, she threw back her head and laughed, exclaiming "Yes! Yes!" before moving on, closely followed by the phalanx of secret service men.
Of course, it was a pretty silly comment of mine. I'm cringing about it now. Fox is not a government institution. It belongs to a yet more powerful force, Rupert Murdoch, my boss. I know Rupert's modus operandi. It is not naive. It responds to market and in the US the rabid right, especially under the Bush Administration, is a bubbling cauldron of a responsive market. For those of us not of the right, the O'Reilly/Hannity vehemence in Fox content often is hard to stomach - but we pay Fox its due for technical expertise, most particularly in coverage of major news crises when it is peerless.
I also know that Murdoch has expressed his approval for Hillary Clinton in this presidential race. And, I have no doubt, that if she or the Democrats win office, the global news station will moderate its content accordingly to meet and reflect the tenor of the country.

Hillary raises hillfire

The American presidential process is a contact sport. Candidates vying to run for President must run the gauntlet, not of the party backroom numbers but of the people of the country. To that end, theirs is an exhausting schedule of meeting everyone everywhere - but first and foremost in New Hampshire.

Hence, the Democrat frontrunner, Senator Hillary Clinton has just made her fifth visit to the Granite State to "Let the Conversation Begin" by throwing herself at the mercy of about 1000 people packed into a Manchester highschool gym. An interesting crowd since it was of broad demographic - young and old, rich and poor, multiracial. Its common bond was the urge to get a close look at this woman, to see if she scrubbed up to their expectations, to put her on the spot with difficult questions...This is their right and their role and they take it earnestly.

She kept the crowd waiting but, oddly, no one seemed to mind. Wallpaper rock music played and a rather merry, party spirit was established - among all except the very clearly labelled Hillary Press followers who sat about intensely tapping on their laptops and talking on their cellphones.


Secret Services officers were all over the place. There is nothing secret about them. They stand out as stern besuited bruisers with vast bulges beneath their jackets. Huge weapons. Machine guns! I felt their piercing gaze assessing my handbag, my camera, my attitude. Those eagle eyes constantly scoping.

Of course Hillary is not your average candidate - not only a Senator but former First Lady of the country. One assumes she is long accustomed to co-existing with that load of protective paranoia.

Hillary breezed into the hall accompanied by the school's Vice Principal and the local Senator, both of whom required their moment in the sun before she was invited to say her piece, expertly microphoned and free to walk around the little stage to address the 360 deg of eager audience.


She went straight for the grass roots with lighthearted anecdotes about her own childhood, gently self-deprecatory and humourous. Ah, what a pro. The audience was immediately with her. And they were to become more so as she launched into the hot issue of health care. The health care lobby is omnipresent at these political events, tribes of people in strident t-shirts handing out "I'm for Healthcare" stickers. Their local organiser, one Tammy Clark, told me that some of the candidates would not wear the stickers but Hillary would. Sure enough, Hillary did. And she spoke passionately about the ways in which the inequality and expense of this country's health system could be improved - starting with electronic medical records. She has fought for this before and, she laughed, she "carries the wounds" of those battles. But she is far from giving up. When she becomes President...

Then there was energy. "It's no use paying regimes that are not friendly to us for energy," she said, explainng that the urgent need to develop alternative sources could be funded by removing tax subsidies to oil companies.

Then education - access to preschools, making college affordable again.
She did not mention President George Bush by name. Instead, she targeted his "administration" and the eight years of dire decisions which have undermined America's standing in the world.

She cited the massive international outpouring of sympathy for the USA following 9/11 "even Iran, for example", lamenting that "we squandered that". And she promised "a concerted effort to tell not just the leaders of the world but the people that, while the US will always defend its borders, it wants to get back to working with people again... to send messages again about how the US cares because that used to be the US message". She wanted village people to turn in bomb-makers because they wanted to be "on the right side".



"I have visions of walking into the Oval Office and seeing this gigantic hole we have dug ourselves into over the last 8 years," she declared.