2008 race? Could we all just calm down

MCCAIN losing ground! Is America ready for a Mormon? Will Hillary say the M-word? Liar, liar pants on fire!

For Pete's sake, could we all just calm down a bit? The 2008 election is 21 months away. In a world where a day is a lifetime, we are hundreds of lifetimes away from knowing anything about who might become the next president. We have no idea what the deciding issues will be in either party's primary process.

And unless the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucus play their proper and historic role -- sorting through the crowd of candidates and a long list of issues -- we are sunk. These early contests are fairly peculiar and only half-sensible. But they provide a grounded, human-scale forum that serves the candidates and the country well.

Modern campaigns are a dreadful way to select a president, with their cattle calls, early debates (in Nevada no less), pretend town meetings at 1,000-seat gymnasiums, unnecessary entourages, TV commercials a year before the primaries.

It's total media madness: candidates filling their days with microphone in hand, surrounded by hundreds, even thousands, of screaming semi-fans and hordes of reporters and cameras, answering the same eight questions with the same eight canned answers. If the presidential race turns on whether Hillary's lips can form the big "M" (for "mistake," as in Iraq) or whether Mitt's big "M" religion is too scary, then the country is really in trouble.

As John Edwards likes to say, it doesn't have to be that way. So could we all just take a deep breath and bring some rationality -- that is, some traditional Iowa and New Hampshire ways -- back into this campaign?

Here's the checklist for the candidates. If you need klieg lights, a microphone, and a stage of any sort, you are doing the wrong kind of event. If you are not the only candidate in the room, you are in the wrong room. And you are in deep trouble if you need advance teams to make a path so maybe, just maybe, you can actually say hello to the one person left on the sidewalk after the hordes of Secret Service agents, camera crews, staff, and hangers-on have trampled everyone else.

That there is enormous media and public interest is no excuse. The next leader of the free world ought not plead helplessness over his or her plight. Each candidate should demand that his or her handlers allow quiet, gradual slogging from town to town, diner to diner, and living room to living room. Candidates need to experience intimate and personal conversations with ordinary people. It's hard work and a much less glamorous path to the presidency, but a path that leads to a more substantive campaign and better-prepared candidates.

Under the old system, Governor Mitt Romney wouldn't be running TV ads. Senator Barack Obama wouldn't be limited to repeating his one-act rock star routine over and over. And Senator Hillary Clinton would not have landed herself in the box of saying or not saying the M-word if she had spent more time listening, learning, and earning the trust of voters -- instead of offering practiced responses from center stage.

So, how about it? Let's everybody stop and slow down and pare down and start again. Unpublicized events in homes of supporters and unpublicized drop-bys at senior centers? Yes, indeed. Unannounced stops at farm stands, coffee shops, corporate cafeterias, and large businesses? Sounds good. Spending time in small towns and out-of-the way places? Sleeping in supporters' homes? Helping them shovel the snow and do the dishes? Now we are cooking!

Sue Casey, a New Hampshire native now in Denver, is the author of "Hart and Soul: Gary Hart's New Hampshire Odyssey and Beyond."