Booknotes

MR. DAYTON DUNCAN, AUTHOR, "GRASS ROOTS": Well, since the New Hampshire primary began in 1952, no one has been elected president of the United States who didn't first win the New Hampshire primary. It's the closest thing we've got to political amniocentesis. New Hampshire votes in February. Nine months later, the nation elects a president who New Hampshire picked nine months earlier.

Mr. DUNCAN: It's a ballot box, actually, from my town of Roxbury, New Hampshire, population 200. That's how we--that's how we still vote in New Hampshire in many pa--in many parts of the state with an old wooden ballot box and you put it right in. And it's sitting there in front of a sort of quintessential New Hampshire house and sort of symbolically relates what the book is about, which is in a certain sense old-time politics in a media age.

Mr. DUNCAN: Oh, quite a bit. I mean, it's the first prime--the reason it's got the impact is because it's the first primary and because it has this unblemished record sort of as a bellwether primary. Because it's the first primary, it gets disproportionate media attention. And, you know, if you win the New Hampshire primary, you can get your cut--picture on the cover of Time magazine, and if you're unknown the day before the--New Hampshire voted, you're not going to be unknown the day after they--they vote for you.

Mr. DUNCAN: No, it's--New Hampshire and Iowa sort of entered into a compact to protect one another from the constant--the quadrennial exercise of doing away with both of them. So Iowa is eight days before the New Hampshire primary. That gives a little bit of time for the dust to settle from the Iowa caucuses and then time to concentrate on New Hampshire. It--but New Hampshire's law, they--we so jealously guard that pole position in the presidential primary process that the law sets it in time but then also has a proviso that it shall be held one week before any other similar event. So if somebody else moves up, New Hampshire's moves up. Someone once said that if--if necessary, New Hampshire would hold its primary at halftime of the Rose Bowl, if we needed to keep first that way.

Mr. DUNCAN: I was--I was a political journalist in New Hampshire first. And then I joined the--the administration of Hugh Gallen, one of three Democratic governors in the history of the state--in the last century in New Hampshire. So I worked with him, and while I was working with him, I s--worked on the Carter campaign in 1980 in New Hampshire. 1984 I was Walter Mondale's national deputy press secretary. Then I began work on this book, in which I followed individuals, Republicans and Democrats, at the local grassroots level. But when I was done with the research on that, and began the writing of it, I got asked to become the national press secretary for Michael Dukakis, which I did, and kept my record unblemished in terms of supporting losing presidential candidates.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yep. Well, I mean, this--essentially, that's--that's--that would be when it's done, and then it goes to editing processes. So you got to tinker with it a little bit, but essentially it was written there.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, it's--it's one year now till the next New Hampshire primary. The process that I describe in "Grass Roots" is to look at the presidential campaign from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. Most campaign books sort of peer over the shoulder of the candidate and the inner circle of advisers, and that was the mold set by Teddy White in 1960 with his "Making of the President" series. And I decided that there's an overlooked and I think important part of politics, and that is the average citizen who wants to volunteer on a campaign, and in New Hampshire, that politically active citizen is a little different from all the other states in that that person gets to know would-be presidents personally. So I followed them, starting a year before the 1988 presidential primary and through their eyes and their experiences, we find out what a New Hampshire primary cycle is like. And so that cycle is just now about to start again. So that's why the book came out now.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, the higher purposes of politics is, as I learned them from Hugh Gallen, who was a remarkable politician, is that you should never forget that politics is about people. It's not about nine-second soundbites and it's not about 30-second attack commercials or the latest poll results. It's about people. He, as governor, stood up for the little man, the underdog, the person who doesn't have a lobbyist, can't afford a lobbyist. And he was sort of a political mentor to me. And my book, I think, tries to follow in that tradition of trying as a reminder that there is a human dimension to politics that we often forget; that is s--that people believe in a--in the candidate, they believe in a cause, they believe in a campaign. And they're willing to, you know, put the rest of their lives on hold for a while to follow that. So you've got ups and downs, elations, frustrations.

One of the women that I followed, a woman named Andy Johnson, began the campaign a year before the primaries, a fervent Hart supporter. Well, Donna Rice and the Monkey Business came along and--and that was the end of the Hart campaign. But she was, by that time, so devoted to politics, the practice of politics, that she decided to join another campaign. Unfortunately, for her, it was Joe Biden's, and two months later, that campaign went under. So she went through the whole trauma, if you will, again. And finally decided she still wanted to participate in the primary, and as we were driving to hear Joe Biden say farewell to his New Hampshire campaign staff, she told me, `I think I'm going to support Paul Simon now. He may be boring, but he's safe, and I need somebody safe.' So for her, campaigning it d--the activity was--was what really motivated her to get involved.

Another fellow was a fellow by the name of Doug Kidd. He was a born-again Christian, a young fellow. Never voted in many r--elections before that. But he got excited about the prospect of Pat Robertson's campaign. So he got involved not only presidentially for the first time, but politically for the first time, and we follow him through the travails that--that--that he has of trying to organize a political campaign around a religious base and struggling oftentimes with his own soul, if you will, about whether Robertson was downplaying his religious background too much. It was a very interesting case, in that way. So he was devoted to a man. Al Rubega is another main character in my book. He's a very fervent gun rights activist in the state of New Hampshire. And he supported Jack Kemp because Kemp, he thought, most consistently supported gun rights issues. And clear up to the day of the primary itself was believing that Kemp was about to take off and win the presidency.

So you have these people that come into the process for different reasons, and obviously a number of them happen to meet a number of frustrations. But we follow them and their experiences for that whole year.

Mr. DUNCAN: I now live in Kansas. I've--I've been in New Hampshire for 20 years but I'm working on a book about the Western frontier and it requires me to go to places like Montana, west Texas, Nevada, quite often, and it's a long drive from New Hampshire to there. When I finish that book, I hope to move back to New Hampshire.

Mr. DUNCAN: I'm an Iowan by birth and raising so I've got--I've--I've got touches--touch base to both the caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But after college, I moved to New Hampshire and adopted it as my home state or it adopted me.

Mr. DUNCAN: I went to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia majoring in German literature, preparing myself for who knows what.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, after school, I moved to New Hampshire. I worked for two years in a hospital and then went to work on a--on a newspaper, small newspaper in Keene, New Hampshire. Did everything there from writing obituaries and headlines to covering City Hall, school boards; then I started covering politics a little bit. And I wrote editorials for a while. I wrote a smart aleck c--c--political column for a while. So it was a good training to become a journalist.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Oh, just--there's--the--if I--if I look back on my life, all the things that have been important have been by chance. And I married a girl from--from New England so that's--that's what took me up to--to New Hampshire. And I fell in love with the state at the same time.

Mr. DUNCAN: It's about 25,000 people. It's the setting for this book, in Cheshire County. If you've seen the play "Our Town," it's about a nearby town called Peterborough. It's a sort of a Currier & Ives part of New Hampshire. It's not engulfed by the--by the growth of Massachusetts yet, but it's also not clear up in the north country where things haven't changed at all. It's sort of a mix of the old and new New Hampshire. And by following everyone in just one county, it also allowed me, besides being--going to all of the local organizational meetings, going door to door with all of the volunteers, going to the phone banks with them, I could follow every candidate's visit into the--into the state. So you see Bruce Babbitt sitting down for breakfast with eight people about a year before the New Hampshire primary and see what that's like. And then you also see a presidential--I mean, a vice presidential trip and see what that's like from the point of view of the people who are organizing it. When Vice President--then Vice President Bush came into Keene.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, New Hampshire is--over the last 20 years it's--it's a very heavily composed--I think it's more--I think it's more than half the people in New Hampshire now are not born in the state. It's the second fastest-growing state east of the Mississippi River, second only to Florida.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, there's an old saying in New Hampshire that if you--if you move there and your children stay there and their children stay there, those children will be considered natives so it's--but it's a pretty nice state. They--they welcome you all right.

Mr. DUNCAN: That's the m--that's the slogan.

Mr. DUNCAN: All the license plates.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, it--the--the real relation to it is it's the words of General John Stark, a hero in the Revolutionary War, from New Hampshire. But it takes on a--a bigger meaning than that. It's an expression, I think, of the fierce independence that people in New Hampshire feel. And we're a little different than a lot of other states in that respect, at least in the--in the East. It's both--people will sort of leave you--respect individualism and they respect crankiness, too. It's a cranky state sometimes.

Mr. DUNCAN: I've read a lot of things on that and--and I don't know exactly why. The Manchester Union Leader, which is the biggest newspaper in the state of New Hampshire, is a very arch conservative paper. That certainly has had some influence in the politics of the state. Oftentimes overrated. In the 1972 presidential primary, of course, they attacked Senator Muskie's wife and he did the famous thing of standing on a flatbed truck in front of the Manchester Union Leader and denouncing William Loeb and as wet snow was falling--and to this day there--you can get into a political debate over whether he was crying as he spoke or whether the snow was melting on his cheeks, but nonetheless, it was portrayed that he was crying in front of William Loeb's newspaper, and that's often credited with making sure that Senator Muskie never became President Muskie.

Mr. DUNCAN: I think my favorite character is Doug Kidd who had never been involved in politics before and followed the--the Robertson campaign. All the people that I followed, all these individuals, knew that I was a Democrat and knew what my politics were, but they also knew that what I was interested in was not an ideological story, but a human story, the human drama of average people involving themselves in politics. And his was very interesting because he was struggling all the time, both in terms of trying to learn what politics is like, how do you organize a county for a candidate. Well, when a candidate would--was coming in, when Pat Robertson would come in, how do you put together a campaign event? But at the same time, he was always struggling with--if whether this was moving forward a greater cause and so it was an interesting--he's an interesting character, I think, and--and sort of a charming one, at that.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: And the--the tantalizing thing for somebody who gets up in the morning, looks in the bathroom mirror and thinks he sees a president staring back at him is that in New Hampshire, if you can get about 55,000 votes in yo--your primary, Republican or Democrat, you're probably going to win. Now 55,000 votes is about the size of a vote in a medium-size city in the rest of the United States or a county in most other--most other states. So it seems like it would be so simple to get 55,000 votes. You get eight people or five people to sit in a room together, and if each of those five people commit themselves to you and they go out and get five more people and those people get five more, it's sort of like a modest chain letter with the grand prize of being leader of the Free World if you can just count to 55,000. And it seems so tantalizingly simple at the outset and that's how I start the book of--with this--those kind of numbers. And then as the campaign progresses, you see it's not quite as simple as you thought it might be.

Mr. DUNCAN: Right.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, 17,000 people voted in Cheshire County, and it was about split, about eight thous--a little over 8,000 apiece in Cheshire County, Republican and Democrat. So in a crowded field, you don't have to get 4,000. You'd only have to get about 3,000 to--to win.

The other thing I did when I did this book is just sort of sidelight to following these human stories of the volunteers is I think for about the first time, I counted the number of people who actually met a candidate. You know, there's this joke about the New Hampshire primary where a reporter's following a candidate and the candidate meets somebody on a street corner. And they talk for a while, and the candidate walks on. The reporter goes up to the New Hampshire citizen and says, `Well, have you decided if you're going to vote for that candidate or not?' And the New Hampshire citizen says, `I don't know yet. It's only the third time I've met him.'

So there was this myth that in New Hampshire, everybody meets the candidates two or three times. Well, I wanted to check that and what I found by counting in Cheshire County at least is that it's about 22 percent of the people who voted actually saw a candidate in person, either shook his hand on a street corner or in a small living room at--at a reception or even in an auditorium at a--at a speech. But 22 percent is much higher than any other state does in a presidential campaign. I've, you know, been through a couple myself and it's mostly, you know, campaign from TV studio to TV studio essentially. So it's very high, but it also means that, you know, three out of four people vote in the New Hampshire primary the way they do ev--everywhere else which is based on what they see on television or read in the paper or hear on the radio.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, I was just up in New Hampshire last week for a week traveling around talking about my book, sort of being a candidate myself. I went to interviews, small homes, and if--if I had announced for--for president, I'd be the front runner for the Democratic race right now because there's nobody running. It's very different than it was four years ago. The Gulf War sort of--a byproduct of the Gulf War was a cease-fire of--of politics. And I think beneficially it means that this campaign for '92 will start at a more reasonable time than the '88 primary did. By this time four years ago, when I started working on--on this book, candidates--there are, you know, five or six candidates in each party coming into New Hampshire on a regular basis meeting with people. Right now, nobody is doing that.

Mr. DUNCAN: Nobody.

Mr. DUNCAN: None whatsoever, but it'll start this summer I think at the latest. And that's plenty of time. One of the things that you learn of as you read through--through my book is the campaigns got organizationally ready. Their grassroots organizations were ready by about August or September of 1987. And what happens th--when-- you reach that point is you're going to reach out to the voters. Well, the voters are very sensible people, and they aren't ready to--to focus on the election till it's about time for them to vote in February. So essentially you had about a four-and-a-half month gap there where the campaigns were going furiously trying to talk to voters who weren't paying any attention.

Mr. DUNCAN: Oh, sure. Yeah, I should--I should point that out. Dick Gephardt, who finished second in the primary, still has a--you know, a core of supporters left over from--from that campaign, as does Al Gore who sent I think Christmas cards and things to the--the people on his list from the--from the last campaign.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yes, I think so. He's kept in--in--in contact with them. Jay Rockefeller, who hasn't run for president, had also sent Christmas cards to people on Democratic mailing lists. So I don't think we have to worry about whether there'll be a campaign or not. There will be. It'll just start later than--than before.

Mr. DUNCAN: No, I mean, it's a--it's sort of an old--it's--it's--it's sort of an old tactic, you know, get--get a list and send it to your close friends who live in New Hampshire. It's a pretty good mailing address to--it's a pretty popular mailing address every four years.

Mr. DUNCAN: I also counted the--within the campaign itself during the campaign of--of '88, the Republican and Democratic campaign headquarters sent out I think it was about three million pieces of mail in--within New Hampshire itself. And, of course, there is only, you know, about 300,000 people voting. So that's a--that's a lot of mail moving--moving around the state. And that doesn't even include--I mean, that would be--a mailing to, say, all Democrats or all Republicans, but it also included handwritten notes from volunteers to their neighbors saying, `You know, I'm supporting Bruce Babbitt because he's strong on the environment. I hope that you'll supp--support him,' or Jack Kemp sent a mailing to all people who owned guns, who had dir--who had hunting license, rather, in New Hampshire because Al Rubega was one of his principal supporters, was very active in gun rights issues. And they sent a note to everyone with hunting licenses talking about Jack Kemp and firearms issues. Bob Dole sent a letter to everyone from the old Mountain Division of his from World War II who lived in New Hampshire. Al Gore sent a letter to everyone who owned a satellite dish in the state of New Hampshire because he was involved in some legislation here in Washington of interest to them.

So it's this incredibly intense organizational activity because you've taken the--the grandest and biggest political event that America has to offer, the selection of the next president of the United States, and at the outset, you confine it into this s--small state geographically and by population.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, prior to the--prior to the outbreak of hostilities in the Gulf, Pat Buchanan had come up to New Hampshire and given a speech to some Republicans who didn't--he said that he's not running for president of the United States, but any time somebody who's mentioned in any context as a possible president crosses the state line of New Hampshire, particularly if it's the year before the primary, you know, alarm bells go off in news rooms around the country and--and people start thinking maybe there's a presidential race in the offing here. I don't think now b--I--I think because of the way the war proceeded and--and was prosecuted so successfully, I--I don't think Bush is going to have any real opposition at this time around.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, I'd say first he was Ronald Reagan's vice president, and Ronald Reagan is loved still in New--in New Hampshire, and that--that just started out by giving him a--a--a big advantage. That's one.

Number two, he early courted and got the support of then-Governor John Sununu. Bob Dole got the support of Senator Warren Rudman. Both are very popular Republican figures in the state, but a governor, typically, has more of an organization --than a US senator does, so in that bargain, regardless of how popular one might be over the other, Bush got a better organization out of it. So that would be number two.

Number three, he made some mistakes early on in his campaigning, so this is not helping him, but I think it's important to point out. He didn't do what most candidates normally do in New Hampshire, which is go and meet people, shake their hands. He had this wall of flesh around him of Secret Service agents, larger advance staff, more aides, larger press corps, that always sort of separated him from the people. And there's one interesting chapter about the local supporter I was following, had this dream event, or dream day, that he had had for Vice President Bush to campaign in Keene, New Hampshire, and one by one, all the things that he wanted him to do--walk down Main Street, go to a diner to meet the people there, go to a--you know, a manufacturing plant and meet the workers--one by one, those things get nixed by either the Secret Service or the vice president's staff, even to the point of where this person was going to lead the vice president around a reception room and keep getting on the wrong side of the Secret Service, and sort of tries to get around to help introduce his candidate to the local--to--to the local people.

So that was a--that's a third item that I think initially hurt him, but then, after he lost, finished third in Iowa, they switched. He was fighting for his political life, and suddenly George Bush, the myst--you know, the presidential candidate was sort of `Joe Bob' Bush, you know, driving a bulldozer, going out and meeting people face-to-face, and it was a quick switch of image.

And the fifth is, despite the notion of New Hampshire as a place where candidates always meet the people, and the people won't vote until they've met the candidate, as I said, about 75 percent of the people don't meet a candidate. And he went very negative in his advertising against Bob Dole in the final days. Bob Dole did what the can--Michael Dukakis, who I worked for in the general election, did later, which is, he didn't respond soon enough, and before he knew it, the primary was over and Bush was the winner.

Mr. DUNCAN: Oh, you bet, yeah. If he went into people's houses in New Hampshire, prominent Republicans at least, you'll see an awful lot of pictures of them and George Bush, either in New Hampshire or over at his place in Kennebunkport, or a little framed note to them, handwritten from him, about--about their time--we should never forget that when he accepted the nomination of his party in--in New Orleans in the summer of 1988, one of the first things he said was--as he'd promised--was `Thank you, New Hampshire.' And the new chief of staff, the chief of staff that he brought with him to Washington, is John Sununu. I...

Mr. DUNCAN: Oh, you bet. Yeah. I mean, the connection is this, is that Sununu and the state of New Hampshire really saved George Bush's political life. If Bob Dole had won New Hampshire after winning Iowa, I think--I think Bush would have probably been politically dead. So--so Sununu had a chit in that respect, but also, he had access to--to the president. They got to know each other, and George Bush saw in him the kind of person he wanted to be his chief of staff.

History was actually re--interestingly, was repeating itself. The very first New Hampshire primary in 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower was supported by then-Governor Sherman Adams of New Hampshire. Eisenhower didn't come to the state, but Adams campaigned very vigorously for him, and Eisenhower won. Sherman Adams became Dwight Eisenhower's chief of staff in the White House, and in 1988, the same thing happened with Bush and Sununu.

Mr. DUNCAN: The wife of one of the best authors in New Hampshire. Midora Hebert is her name, and her husband's name is Ernest Hebert, whose newest novel is entitled, "Live Free or Die."

Mr. DUNCAN: She is. She's semi-retired now, raising two small children, which is more than a full-time job in its own right.

Mr. DUNCAN: I met her as--after I was leaving my job as chief of staff for Governor Gallen, who--who lost when he ran for a third term, and then died quite suddenly. She was just coming in as a political reporter in--in Concord, New Hampshire. That's where we first met.

Mr. DUNCAN: She had two big roles--three roles. First of all, she's my first editor, first-line editor, and a very tough one, I might add. Secondly, she just helps keep me going, and third, I--on--on the primary day itself, since I was following, you know, eight or nine people and all of the campaigns, I--I couldn't follow everybody on that final day. It was--it would have been physically impossible, so I had a great reporting crew, I think what--not only one of the biggest in New Hampshire on that day, but the highest quality. My wife, number one; Ken Burns, who was the documentary filmmaker for "The Civil War," followed a person for me; Ernie Hebert, the author, followed one; the managing editor of Yankee magazine, Kim Clark, followed a person for me; a fellow who's the journalism professor and political scientist from the University of Massachusetts followed somebody for me; a couple other book authors followed people for me, so I had a--I had a great crew. I think I--I would stack mine up against the Washington Post's or anybody else's.

Mr. DUNCAN: I started by contacting the campaigns, telling them what I wanted to do and getting their permission to sit in on the local organizational meetings, and I would go to those meetings and meet the people. Sometimes it'd be three or four people, or--or--or sometimes only a couple of people, and get to know them. And as the groups got bigger and bigger, I got to know all of them. Or when a candidate came into the county, I would follow the candidate around and meet the people h--he was meeting.

And as time went on, I picked a person from each campaign, and when I sat down to write the book, I decided to focus on six people who represent a range of motivations of why they got involved, who represent a range of previous experience in politics and whose experiences themselves showed, you know, the different--different things that can happen to--to an individual. So it was a combination of luck and a combination of--of design of the people I finally settled on.

Mr. DUNCAN: No. No, I was very--as I say, I--I'm a Democrat, and so I anticipated that perhaps the Republicans might be reluctant, but I--because I started so early--I actually started contacting campaigns in December of '86--all of them were, you know--I t--I said, `Look, I'm not interested in, you know, getting--scooping somebody on, you know, who's going to put up what ad first or what your tactics are, and I'm not going to tell one campaign what the other campaign is doing, and I'm not going to be telling political reporters who I know anything that you would consider sensitive, and the book won't come out until three years after the event anyway.' So any--any things that were tactical secrets won't be--you know, will be long past secrecy, and they all gave me their permission, and--and also I think by the time--because I started so early, by the time it got to the time where people were kind of nervous about who was sitting in a room, they were so used to seeing me around there, sitting with my notebook that nobody paid any attention to it.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: No, and I--and I hope--I think that's one--I--I ho--I hope that's one of the things that pali--particularly political journalists or o--other people will learn from reading my book, which is we tend to try to stereotype people by ideology and we also--one side or the other tends to demonize the other side. You support--I support Mike Dukakis and you support Jack Kemp; therefore, you're bad. And I think what emerges from my book, by focusing on the--the very human stories of these people, is that no ideology has a monopoly on decency, or a monopoly on people of integrity and belief.

All the people that I followed are very different from one another in many respects, a--in what they believe on s--individual issues, for instance, or why they got involved. But the one thing that they all had in common, the common thread for them, is that they believed in the process itself. I call it `the democratic covenant' at the end of the book, the only time I sort of--sort of enter in and give my own views of things, and that covenant is a two-way bargain.

First is that the outcome is relevant to the citizen, that who gets elected matters somehow. It might matter that you get a job as chief of staff in the White House in a very self-interested way, or it might matter that your issue gets a higher order in the pecking order of the agenda of the president of the United States. Or it even might be a vague thing that a good and decent man, that you think is a good and decent man, becomes president of the United States. But it matters, the outcome matters to you.

And the second part of the bargain is that you, the--the citizen, is relevant to the outcome. If it's just your vote, that counts, and it matters, but if you're a volunteer, that matters even more, because maybe you're going to win two or three votes. And it needs--those two interlocking provisions, you know, that it matters who wins, and I matter to the process, that I--that I hope people would take fr--take from this.

I--as I say, we can't let politics become simply some abstraction of poll numbers and media images. If we do, we forget that at its basis, what democracy is, it's about people, that they have--they're individuals. They become statistics, perhaps, but at--you know, you have to keep remembering that those lists that you start the campaign with represent actual human beings.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, you know, I'm oh-for-3, so I'm not sure that too many people are going to call me. I don't know. I--I--politics and journalism are my two professional passions. Usually, I keep them very separate. I write about things not related to politics, and then when I get in politics, I don't--don't write about it. You know, I don't--I don't like `kiss-and-tell' stories from the inside. But in this instance, I thought it--because it was a perspective on presidential politics that no one's written about before, that I would--I would join the two.

I'll stay somewhat politically active, but climbing into an airplane for six months with 150 reporters and Secret Service and--and a candidate, and going from one event to another without much sleep, is something I think I'll leave to somebody else in '92.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, I think there--the--he still has some supporters in--in New Hampshire, and I--I don't know if he sent Christmas cards or not.

Mr. DUNCAN: I think Dukakis--he had a--he had an event for all of his New Hampshire supporters, key supporters, shortly after the election in 1988, but he's out in Australia now, I think, or something like that, and I don't think he's thinking about running again.

Mr. DUNCAN: I don't think he's going to run again.

Mr. DUNCAN: George McGovern's the only one that's said--actually said, `Maybe I will run.' He came to New Hampshire about a month ago and gave a speech at the university there; did go and meet, you know, voters, like you--like you would do if you were really getting started. But he did say, `If nobody else runs on the issues that I think are important, then I will run,' and I know that he's just recently been to Iowa, so I think he'll probably run.

Mr. DUNCAN: I don't think so. I--he's--he's involved in some environmental issues now. And I don't think he's going to go for it. He was an interesting case. One of the people I followed extensively was a Babbitt supporter, and his was a very interesting case of media image and personal image. People--he would sway people over, over time, by meeting with them and talking to them, and they got to like him and admire him greatly, but every time he was on TV, it sort of set him back a--you know, a month or two organizationally. I think that everybody--I think in his case, everyone who did vote for him in the New Hampshire presidential primary had met him.

Mr. DUNCAN: OK.

Mr. DUNCAN: Oh, right. Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: That's right.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah. This--well, it--as it turned out, it was how they thought but--but only briefly.

Mr. DUNCAN: But this--this fellow that I'd been following for a year, who became very intensely devoted to Bruce Babbitt, at the same time you thought--he'd go through sort of these wild swings of where they thought Babbitt had no chance at all, or whether maybe he did have a chance, and he--he decided that if Babbitt did well in Iowa, perhaps he could do well in New Hampshire. And the C-SPAN coverage of the one Iowa caucus...

Mr. DUNCAN: ...that they did live...

Mr. DUNCAN: ...but went on, Babbitt did emerge as the winner, and this fellow lived out in the country and didn't have cable, and one of the other Babbitt supporters got on the phone and said, `I think you'd better get down here. I think it's happening, finally.' He's driving furiously to get down to--to watch it, and his hopes are rekindled. He thinks maybe it's going to pull it off after all, you know. How wonderful. And he turned on his radio just as the results started to come in, and Babbitt finished next to last in Iowa, and he went and said hello to the people, turned around and drove home, and--and believed, correctly, that it was already over for Bruce Babbitt.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Right.

Mr. DUNCAN: They have some influence, the local media does. I--I would say actually the national media has a greater impact on the results in the New Hampshire primary than the local media does. The best instance of that's the 1984 primary between Mondale and Hart and a bunch of others. Hart got this momentum--even though he finished a very distant second to Mondale in Iowa, he suddenly was portrayed as the exciting alternative to Mondale, and Mondale had a certain vote and his organization was very good, had identified it and got that vote out. Hart had a very good organization, but they had--you know, but they were not as--I--I don't think as well-developed as Mondale's. But he got this big media roll. Every night on television, both national media and I'd say Boston television, which is very influential in New Hampshire, and--and that had big impact on it.

The Manchester Union Leader, the state's largest newspaper and a very arch conservative paper, very political paper, has a very big influence within Manchester itself. It supported Pete du Pont in 1988, and he didn't do--he finished, I think, fourth or fifth in--in New Hampshire, but he finished much higher in--in Manchester, so it has a big impact in Manchester, and when it goads a candidate it doesn't like into making a mistake, of course it has a big impact as well.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: A little bit, but not too much, and I think for--I think the main reason was--is because I started so early, you know. By the time that they would be getting nervous about it, they were sort of used to me sitting there in the organizational meeting with them. There was no deception on anybody's part. I went to them at the start, and I said, `Here's--here's what I'm doing. I want to write a book from--you know, from an average person's perspective of what it's like to participate in a New Hampshire primary, and I may want to write about you. Can I talk to you?' And we'd do an interview or a couple of interviews, and I'd go to some meetings with them, and then I'd say, `Yeah, I really a--do want to keep following you. Is that OK?' And so they--they knew what I was--what I was doing, but I was sort of an old shoe by the time...

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, I picked about 10 people that I kept track of pretty closely for 14 months, but when I started to write, I focused on six primarily, because I th--I thought it'd be trouble--trouble for a reader to keep track of more than six.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, I didn't leave them out entirely, because you get the whole--you get the whole view of what happened in the county, but for instance, the Jackson campaign started much later than the others. You get a view--you go to a couple Jackson meetings in my book and talk to the coordinator, but it's not a major part. Dole--you meet the--the--the Dole people later in book, partly, again, because they didn't start as early as the others. Haig and du Pont, you go events with them, but they never even got an organization going.

Then you have some people--Shelley Nelkens is a woman who is very adamantly against nuclear power, so adamantly against it that she would go to every candidate that she could come close to and try to convince them that they should--you know, that should be their position, too, and she was looking for a candidate who would fit her cause, but because she was so fervent in her belief, she couldn't find a candidate pure enough, and so she decided not to support anybody.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, it's a--I think that's actually--I'm sure there's a lot of candidates who would disagree with what I'm going to say, but I think that's healthy, for two reasons. One is I think it's good for somebody who wants to be president of the United States to get asked impertinent questions and rude questions every once in a while, both--particularly if it's from an average citizen. Number one, it might be that it's not so rude or impertinent. It might just be a signal to them that what they've been talking about does--doesn't bear much relation to the concerns of an average person.

Secondly, it's interesting in--in--in trying to assess who a candidate is and what they're made of, how they handle those situations are sometimes interesting. In one of the--one of the--an--anecdotes that I go through in the book, or one of the scenes that I describe, Bruce Babbitt's meeting with a group of people, all very polite, it's a very nice breakfast that they're having, and--and, you know, everyone's--it was a give and take, but Shelley Nelkens is one of the people there, and she just keeps going back at him and back at him and challenged him on environmental issues. And he finally has to sort of deal with her firmly but with a sense of humor, and in doing so, the other people learn something about Babbitt, and so in a certain sense, it was beneficial to him, at least in the sense that the people watching it respond better.

The same thing--Al Rubega is showing Jack Kemp around Cheshire County. They have a little reception, and a couple of people crash the reception. I mean, not crash through the door, but they're there without being invited. And they start challenging Kemp on the "Star Wars" program, and Al Rubega steps forward to try to protect his candidate, you know, f--from this--not harassment, but this challenge, and finally Kemp pushes Al Rubega aside and s--and says, you know, `Let--I'm the candidate here, and let me handle that.' And he knocked it out of the ball park, and the people clapped and it turned out to be an important moment for the Kemp campaign in--in--in that particular area.

So you get a chance to--to see whether somebody responds well or not. I guess the classic example of that, in a little different respect, was 1980, when Bush sort of froze at the microphone in the debate with Reagan, who, you know, stood up and said, `I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green,' and people, you know, rightly or wrongly, thought that they saw a difference between the two in terms of their--you know, what kind of mettle they had.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Oh--I th--I think that Pat Robertson probably was a more--came across more forcefully and--and genially, actually, on television than he did in person, and Al Haig also was better on television than he was in person.

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah. Yeah, I mean the--you know, it's not everybody in the--not everybody in the state is consumed with those things, but particularly when there is that--that difference. I mean, the Babbitt one was--was the incredibly extreme example of it, where people--a lot of times, it was people seeing the candidate on TV and they meet him in person, and they're sort of, you know, adjusting from that. But with Babbitt's case, there was all these people who had met him and were considering joining his campaign, and then they watched him on television and they said, `Well, that's--he doesn't look the same.' But they knew the real person, but nonetheless, they entered into their judgment, well, if you're going to be president of the United States, you've got to be able to come across that way, and a number of people that I described ended up not supporting him because of that.

Mr. DUNCAN: Candidate X.

Mr. DUNCAN: Democrat.

Mr. DUNCAN: Number one, I would read "Grass Roots," if I can--it's--they'll--they'll...

Mr. DUNCAN: Yeah, and it'll be the best investment you make. But it would give you a sense of--you know, o--of a campaign. But more seriously, you've got to come up to--if you want to be president of the United States, you've got to run for president. That sounds silly, but I think a lot of people, particularly some Democrats, are thinking, `Well, you know, maybe I won't run in '92; I'll wait till '96.' But I think they ought to run now. I would go--first go up to New Hampshire and Iowa, meet some--you know, some core people. I wouldn't get too hurried about trying to build an organization, but I would go to New Hampshire, meet as many people as I could, give some speeches, define yourself, define some turf on some issues.

Mr. DUNCAN: Right.

Mr. DUNCAN: OK.

Mr. DUNCAN: OK.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, I would call--you--I would call Andy Johnson, or I would call Tom Britton or Joe Robinson or Dan Burnham. Th...

Mr. DUNCAN: They're all--they're all people that are Democrats, they're involved in politics.

Mr. DUNCAN: I--you--you'd say, you know, `I'm candidate--I'm--I'm Senator X and I'm thinking of running for president, and I'd like to come up to Keene and meet with you. Would you like to meet with me, and maybe could you get a few people that you think would be interested to get together in a living room?' And I--I would start off by not coming into New Hampshire to tell them what I'm going to do, but to listen to people, and--and just say--ask them for some advice, but also say, you know, `I think the main issue that I'm--I'm concerned with is whatever--whatever it is that you're interested in.' I'm--I'm hoping that if you're running for president, number one, you've got some ideas to begin with.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, that's why I think you--that's why I think some candidates make mistakes in--in picking who's going to be doing their groundwork for them before they get a better sense themselves.

Mr. DUNCAN: I would send whoever your top political person is on your staff. I'd send them up to New Hampshire, too, and have them go around and meet the, you know, Democratic activists and make your own judgment of--you know, not--not everybody is a political genius, and so you got to make a judgment of whose advice do I think I could follow? And the only way you can do that is the way a president has to make his decisions, too. You got to rely on your own judgment and the judgment of other people.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, then I'd try--I'd come back a little later, maybe a month later and--and not only meet with them but try to--try to meet with a constituency group if your--say your--your major issue is day care--I would try to go to some day care centers and maybe go to the Association of Day Care Providers, give a speech there about what you want to do. You want to--you want to start establishing a presence through the media as well. I shouldn't forget that...

Mr. DUNCAN: You--you go--in Keene, you would--the way you'd have to do it is you'd go--walk into the offices of the Keene Sentinel, you call ahead and say, `I'm thinking about running for president.' You don't want to announce yet, but, `I'm thinking of running for president, and I'm going to be in Keene. Would you like to si--I'd like to sit down and talk with you, or if you'd like to talk with me.'

Mr. DUNCAN: Tom Carney, the editor, yeah.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, it depends--by--by the fifth time you called him, he might say, `Here comes another one.' In 1976, when I was a reporter there, we started passing Jimmy Carter around from one person to another because we all were getting tired of him walking in, but, you know, he started pretty--pretty early.

So you'd call him up, you'd call the radio s--there's two radio stations, and you'd call them, and ask them if they'd like to talk to you. So you want to do--what you want to do is you want to make--establish some initial contacts with the people who hopefully will start forming an organization for you, but also you don't want to just--you want to make some--be noticed by the people who are going to be voting later on.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, you would go first where the people live, and Keene is the--about the--there are 10 counties, and it's about the sixth in--in--in that order.

Mr. DUNCAN: The first is Hillsborough County where Manchester, the largest city, and Nashua, the second-largest city, are.

Mr. DUNCAN: Second is--I think now is Rockingham County. It's--there's--the southeastern corner of New Hampshire that butts up against Massachusetts and is closest to Boston is the area. So the--actually the first places you want to go are--are those places and Concord, which is the state capital, and I think me--that county is like the fourth largest, but it's sort of also a media hub.

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, you come back to Washington and--and tell your fund-raisers, `I've been to New Hampshire. Things look good. Raise some money for me.'

Mr. DUNCAN: Well, they'll probably go--they'll probably send you to California. That's where--that's where you raise the money. You don't raise any money in New Hampshire, you just spend some there. But you...

Mr. DUNCAN: Not really, no. First of all it's not--it's not very big, and secondly, I think, unfortunately, there's a certain sense of self-importance in a number of people in New Hampshire, and when you try to hold a fund-raiser there as a presidential candidate, they say, `Wait a minute. You don't get it. You go raise your money someplace else and--and spend it here.'

Mr. DUNCAN: No, there's no s--there's no general sales or income tax, but there are taxes. The main revenue is a tax--a business profits tax. They have an actual tax on dividends and interest--unearned interest. That's--that's a big source of revenue. Liquor sales is very big, lottery and cigarette taxes.

Mr. DUNCAN: Thanks for having me.