Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Campaigns Aren’t What They Used To Be

By Bill Rappleye

Campaigns up here aren’t what they used to be.  It’s all getting more formalized…more disciplined.  Less of the free-form scrums that used to characterize the informal New Hampshire process.  Now the crowds are so big; the press corps so large; that it’s getting much more organized, by the campaigns.  Last night, my photographer, Don O’Sullivan (known as Pho) and I zipped over to Clinton’s post-election gathering at the University of Southern New Hampshire gymnasium about the time the polls closed.  We were directed to parking several lots away from the building, as the nearby ones were already full.  Plenty more supporters were arriving, and we parked and walked back with the crowd to the gym. There, we followed signs to the press check-in area.  No go.  Press availability filled up three hours ago, we were told.  There’d be no access.  We got our pictures later from a network camera already set up.

Events are tightly controlled.  We heard about one where supporters were herded into an overflow room, even though the main room wasn’t full!  The candidates’ backers wanted in to see their politician, but the story line of an overflow crowd required they be kept in a side room.

Preparing for our coverage, we’d contacted a local professor’s former student, now working for the Obama campaign.  We hoped to profile a local kid working on a big-time political campaign.  He nicely e-mailed us back with the phone number of the press secretary, and said he couldn’t speak with us himself, on any subject, per orders of the campaign.

The handlers rule, these days.  A misstatement to a local news station can be magnified by the internet and endlessly repeated on cable TV, and can’t be afforded.

Ahh, but then there are the voters.  They refused to be controlled here in New Hampshire.  They don’t want to hear the tightly packaged television commercial, they want to see the candidate.  And because of this primary, they get to see the candidate.  On the voters’ terms, not the managers’.  The proof?  Hillary’s victory.  What we heard from more than one supporter as a rationale for her last minute success, was that she finally let her true personality show.  The voters liked her when she let down her guard, and became real to them.  She became human, not some policy-spouting campaign robot.  In the final days, she participated in long question and answer sessions with all comers.  She became available to the press.  It seems even that episode where her voice broke and she barely controlled her emotions when talking about the strain of the campaign was a plus.  It must have horrified her advisors.  It might have won the primary for her.