Red Sox, Nostalgia & Dinner

Candidates mean well. But frankly, as long as the Boston Red Sox are still in the playoff hunt, most folks in New Hampshire won't pay a great deal of attention to their other favorite sport -- Presidential politics. This fact was implicitly acknowledged by candidates Kerry and Dean this week, when Kerry "went negative" on Dean, charging him with, of all things, being a New York Yankees fan. He may as well have called the man a Communist. Dean responded quickly with a denial, saying he had converted to Red Sox nation in 2000, and was now loyal to the Olde Towne team. Personally, I don't know if I could trust a candidate who was ever a Yankees fan, but the question for me now is about Connecticut's Joe Lieberman, from that "neutral zone" between Massachusetts and New York. So, Senator L., Red Sox or Yankees?

We've been told there are ten major Democratic candidates. The candidacies of five of them, however, seem to be little more than a rumor in NH, at least if one is to judge on the basis of television presence. It seems fair to say that in NH, there is a first and second division among the candidates. Dean, Edwards, Gephardt, Kerry, & Lieberman have all been quite visible. The other five (what were their names?) have dropped in from time to time, but to my knowlege have not run ads on radio or TV. The same is true for the direct mail campaigns. I've received material from each of the "top five," but haven't heard yet from Braun, Clark, Graham, Kucinich, or Sharpton. (Of course, Clark is late to the dance, and so this week got lots of free media, and the blush of novelty in the polls).

The ads that have been running on television are what one would expect in the early stages of a campaign. While specific issues are implicitly suggested, or vaguely addressed, the ads are mainly of the introductory variety, those that give us a glimpse of the candidate's character and motivation. The Gephardt ad now running, for instance, has the obligatory nostalgic black-and-white photo of the candidate as a toddler with his hard-working, milkman Dad, and another of the candidate as a teen, standing with his parents on the front porch of his humble middle-class Missouri home. Seeing the candidate in such an environment, we are meant to understand something of who he is by knowing something of where he came from. Dick Gephardt is no stranger to New Hampshire voters. But these ads are nevertheless important, I think, in accomplishing an introduction, or reintroduction, to the voters.

Other candidates have done similar ads. John Kerry is now running his that replays the testimony he gave in 1968 at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a representative of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This instance of early political conscience serves as a worthy substitute for the humble middle class origins other candidates can offer. The young Kerry is followed by the mature candidate making his pitch, but we are left to wonder, listening to both, whether the candidate has had a voice-change operation.

There will be time for harder hitting ads on controversial issues later. And, I expect the negative ads will focus on more than baseball. Right now, the ad battle seems to be contest for the "friendship" of the voters. The ads serve as a reminder that this or that candidate is still in the race, still interested in reaching the voters, and is at least someone New Hampshire citizens might be willing to invite to dinner.