Is New Hampshire slipping to Kerry?

HOPKINTON, N.H.
VETERAN REPUBLICAN pol that he is, Charlie Bass satisfied my desire for a quick reading of President Bush's temperature in a hotly contested battleground state.

In his joint appearance with his opponent, the congressman from the Concord-centered district got right to the point. Of course he supports Bush, he said. But there is a difference between unity and unanimity. Bass said he thinks Bush is wrong on embryonic stem cell research, on a woman's right to choose, on the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada, and in not fully funding the federal share of special education requirements on the states.

Baloney, replied his surprisingly strong opponent, Concord attorney Paul Hodes. Bass is in fact a Bush and House GOP leadership lackey, Hodes noted, voting with them 92 percent of the time, including the war in Iraq and multiple tax cuts for the comfortable. In no time, Hodes had them lumped together as "the Bush-Bass regime."

Bass, however, had his own point to score, pressing his opponent to cite his differences with Democratic nominee John Kerry.

Truth be told, GOP politicians believe Bush is not his own best supporter down the stretch. The guy who campaigned four years ago as a uniter is clearly a divider this year, and in several of the most closely contested states he is being kept away because his appearances tend to gin up the local Democrats as much as they do Republicans. In the so-called Red states Bush carried in 2000 that he is most in danger of losing to Kerry -- New Hampshire, Ohio, and Nevada most prominently -- Bush's absences since the debates have been noteworthy. There are exceptions (Florida, above all), but the pattern has been clear, as witness recent forays into longshot and Kerry-leaning territories like New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Bush campaign officials believe his relentlessly negative advertising against Kerry as a terrorist coddler and weakling are much more effective than the man himself. Bush will be back one more time to rally the troops, but during the final persuasion period, he has been absent. The campaign also prefers surrogates, especially those who can soften Bush's ideological image.

That was what was going on in this postcard-perfect New England town the other day when Laura Bush stopped by to be photographed inspecting the local pumpkins with daughter Jenna in Londonderry and hold minirallies. She spoke quietly and far more effectively than her husband does, about choices in the war on terror.

The Democrats, however, had a more-than-matching spectacle of their own down the street. Actor Paul Newman showed up to support local environmentalists and others opposing via a lawsuit the operation of an incinerator that can burn used wood products containing lead. With his trademark baby blues and a hat with an "Old Guys Rule" logo, Newman declared that the largest lead-pollution emitter in the state is "a microcosm of the insult that this administration has heaped upon the environment." My hunch is that Bush is better helped by soft sells to go with his harsh TV commercials and that high-profile surrogates vetting an environmental issue do more for Kerry here than he can do for himself with insult-a-day campaigning.

If New Hampshire is on the verge of slipping away from Bush -- and his people are slightly less optimistic than Kerry's -- the reason is that moderate voters in the state's suburban southern tier and along the seacoast, especially women, have begun to slip away.

Terrorism and fear of Kerry is the president's sole remaining card.

This drift of moderates away from Bush was epitomized by still another event last week that wasn't supposed to be suffused with politics, but this is New Hampshire in election season. It was the Business and Industrial Association's annual dinner where its "lifetime achievement award" was presented to a true pillar of moderation her, prominent attorney Malcolm McLane.

The Bush surrogate at the affair was chief of staff Andrew Card, who gave the same robotic recitation of "the president in crisis mode" he has been giving for three years. After Card left, McLane brought the nonpartisan crowd to its feet with a typically concise statement that he intended to support Kerry and John Edwards.

For decades, he and his wife, Susan, a tower of liberal Republicanism in the Legislature, have typified the state's vital center. Susan McLane switched parties a decade ago after supporting Bush's dad in 1988. She and her daughter, Manchester attorney Annie McLane Kuster, have published a touching book about the family and its efforts to cope with Susan McLane's experience with the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

As Malcolm McLane puts it, the family has never changed its politics, it is the Republicans' big tent that has moved, not them. I suspect they are at least a metaphor, possibly a harbinger.

Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.