Campaign Brings Chance Of Snow

“To snow” has two meanings. 1) To fall as a shower of snow crystals. 2) To deceive, persuade or charm glibly.

Either way, snow reminds me of politics. This is the season when reporters begin to track candidates through the snows of New Hampshire. The unspeakable chasing the inedible, as Oscar Wilde said of fox-hunting.

Some of the dispatches from the land of the world’s pickiest voters already sound a bit cranky.

“Patrick J. Buchanan stumped the north country throughout the day in an area near Lake Winnipesaukee,” wrote Dan Balz of The Washington Post. “It is … full of towns with names that all sound alike. For example, there are Wolfeboro, East Wolfeboro, North Wolfeboro and Wolfeboro Center, all clustered toward the end of the lake, which makes it difficult to find a candidate even on sunny days, let alone days like yesterday, when the blowing snow seemed to make some small towns disappear from the landscape.”

Perhaps because I am snowbound with my “emergency shelf” of Mallomars and Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby, rather than trudging around the Wolfeboro multiplex, I still have hope for ‘96.

Every campaign produces moments of great theater. So before the inmates take over the asylum, before we watch Phil Gramm cuddle up to a cow (and finally enjoy an aesthetic advantage), before Bob Dole “forgets” that the microphone is on and whispers something passionate to Liddy, before Steve Forbes sits on a hay bale, let’s see what the new crowd has to live up to, given the shows of yesteryear.

A Woman Scorned: When Gary Hart defiantly returned to the ‘88 race, after dropping out over Donna Rice, he had to be very nice to his wife, Lee, so that she would campaign with him. It was not easy.

When he gave speeches, she glared at him. Their campaign consisted of walking around New Hampshire malls, shaking hands with curious shoppers. Occasionally, young men would push their giggling blond girlfriends next to Hart, so they could get a picture of a little monkey business.

But the nadir of this nadir came late one night at Logan airport. Without a cocoon of Secret Service agents and protective aides, Hart found himself in the horrible position of being just another exhausted, middle-aged guy looking for his luggage. He searched in vain for the right carousel, trailed by his irritated wife and a couple of reporters acting like difficult children.

“Ga-a-a-ry, you’re not showing your leadership,” Lee Hart called out, loudly. “Ga-a-a-ry, what about your leadership!”

The Case of the Phantom Brows: During the Iowa caucuses in ‘88, we got a tip that Richard Gephardt was being cosmetically enhanced. The Times’ intrepid Bill Schmidt went to ask a Gephardt aide whether it was true that the candidate had begun darkening his eyebrows so that he did not wash out under television lights and look like an android covered with shrink wrap.

“Are you asking me whether or not Representative Gephardt uses eyebrow liner?” Laura Nichols, a press aide, asked a chagrined Schmidt.

After ascertaining that Gephardt was using just a touch of eyebrow pencil for commercials and television appearances, and had not undergone any permanent tattooing process, Schmidt called Francis O’Brien, the Dukakis press secretary, to see if he had any comment for the press.

“What, are you people nuts?” O’Brien replied.

Tanks for the Memories: As bad as the Dukakis tank ride was, it could have been worse.

The scene of Michael Dukakis riding in a tank, looking like Snoopy in a helmet, looking as if he would rather be home reading “Swedish Land Use Planning,” caused reporters and cameramen to laugh so hard they could barely take notes or pictures.

But Sig Rogich, the Bush media adviser who helped make the pathetic tankster into a poster boy for the Bush campaign, told me once that he had wanted to make the commercial running the tape in slo-mo with a soundtrack of “Hang On, Sloopy.”

Slouching toward New Hampshire for our quadrennial rituals can be hazardous to the collective sanity. Still, absurdity can be fun. As George Bush would say, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina.”

Maybe being snowed in will prepare us for being snowed.

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