Second chance for a lasting impression
DERRY, N.H.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS count, but in primary politics, final impressions matter far more - and in New Hampshire, that's very good news for John McCain.
Once considered cash-starved campaign roadkill, the Arizona senator has accomplished a remarkable comeback here. Admirers who had regretfully written him off are returning to his cause, while others who had been angered by his previous approach to immigration reform are giving him a second look.
Mind you, this is not the runaway love affair the state had with the jaunty iconoclast of 2000. Rather, it's a considered judgment after a long campaign, a more ambivalent return to an older, grimmer, stalwart who, just a few months ago, didn't strike the state as the right man for the moment.
Some of it is that voters judge him to have the proper foreign-policy experience for a dangerous era, a theme McCain is stressing in his closing arguments. Others admire his penchant for bipartisanship. Still, others like his vow to crack down on pork-barrel spending.
But in a larger sense, what's really happening is this: The state's finely honed authenticity meter has kicked in. Increasing numbers are concluding that McCain's character and candor stand out. That's what I heard at several McCain events on Wednesday, sometimes from voters who only recently had been leaning toward someone else.
Now, the Straight Talk Express has certainly made some detours and diversions since 2000. McCain has changed his tune on immigration, going from support for comprehensive reform to a more conservative secure-the-borders-first stand. And despite having voted against the Bush income tax cuts as too large and weighted toward the wealthy, he now says he would keep them all, arguing that letting them expire would constitute an unacceptable tax hike.
Still, in this Republican field, McCain has come across as the candidate most likely to tell voters the truth.
That's an impression reinforced by an extraordinary spate of newspaper endorsements, including those of the New Hampshire Union Leader, the Nashua Telegraph, the Portsmouth Herald, the Concord Monitor, the Keene Sentinel, the Valley News, the Salmon Press (with 11 New Hampshire papers), plus the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.
Mitt Romney, in contrast, has comported himself as an off-putting combination of attack dog and tattletale, flailing away at both McCain and Mike Huckabee in TV ads, his campaign pointing out seemingly every time his rivals have broken with conservative GOP orthodoxy or been critical of the Bush administration. In a shrewd bit of political jujitsu, McCain has used those attacks as an opportunity to underscore the glowing words editorialists have had for him - and their unflattering critique of Romney.
"We think that that has had an impact in getting people to give us a second look and maybe be a little skeptical about attack ads run by Governor Romney," McCain told reporters Wednesday in Derry, where he campaigned again with Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democrats' 2000 VP nominee, and now a self-styled Independent Democrat.
I asked Lieberman this question: Would he have endorsed McCain if so many of his colleagues hadn't bailed on him him after his 2006 Senate primary loss to Ned Lamont?
"That's not a fair question," objected McCain. Lieberman, however, pivoted off that query and into a handsome plug for McCain. "The Connecticut Democrats, by rejecting my renomination . . . certainly liberated me to go for the best qualified candidate for president," Lieberman said. "But my endorsement of John is a totally affirmative act . . . It's because I truly believe that in a dangerous world with a threat to our security, he is ready to be president of the United States the day he's sworn in."
Although Lieberman's support will probably anger liberal Democrats, it, like the newspaper endorsements, seems likely to bolster McCain with New Hampshire's crucial independent voters.
And so, after a long campaign in which Romney has assiduously remade himself to fit what he thought would be the current Republican fashion, New Hampshire voters are returning to a candidate who has stayed truer to who he is.
With four full days left before voters go to the polls, nothing is certain. Last night's (post-deadline) results in Iowa and Saturday's New Hampshire debate could change the Granite State dynamic yet again. But in spending this week concentrating on New Hampshire while most of his rivals focused on Iowa, John McCain has at least set the stage for a possible encore to his 2000 victory here.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
MORE: Read Lehigh's column on voter views.
