For candidates, ability to connect sets the course
STRATHAM, N.H. - Fred Thompson had no sooner finished giving his first New Hampshire stump speech as an official presidential candidate when masses of people began clamoring for a chance to meet him.
A supporter introduced him to a former national GOP committeewoman, Ruth Griffin. "Hi, Ms. Griffin," he said in a leisurely drawl, as if he'd just bumped into a neighbor at the country store.
As he bent down to sign a photograph she'd brought of the two of them at a fund-raiser last spring, she reminded him, "The name's Ruth."
He regarded her with a knowing smile, ignoring the noisy crowd pressing in from all sides. "You know why I remember your name? Cause that's my mother's name. A beautiful name."
Griffin ate it up. "I definitely felt he knew who I was," she said later, particularly pleased that he mentioned his mom. "It's a personal touch, isn't it?"
Bonding with voters is a must for presidential candidates in New Hampshire, Iowa, and other early voting states that will set the course of the nomination battle, where people expect to not only meet the contenders in person but develop a sense of the candidate as a human being. Campaigns past have shown that candidates' capacity for the 30-second mind-meld can make (Bill Clinton) or break (Steve Forbes) their fortunes.
"I think [voters] have their truth detectors on," said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. "I think they're looking for someone who can think on his feet, someone who seems to be giving a spontaneous answer. . . . You can tell whether they're in a comfort zone, and actually enjoying themselves, or thinking, 'When is this going to be over?' "
But connecting with dozens, even hundreds of people, in a short period of time can be fraught with danger as the presidential contenders slog through 18-hour days of one meet-and-greet after another.
"As hard as it is to make a good impression on voters . . . it's really easy to make a bad impression - one that is lasting and difficult to overcome, that no amount of 30-second commercials or even agreement on the issues" can erase, said Fergus Cullen, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party.
This presidential campaign, ubiquitous cellphone cameras and the rise of YouTube have transformed some of these intimate exchanges into national memories - just ask Senator Joe Biden, whose attempt at a joke with an Indian-American voter about Indians working at doughnut shops and convenience stores found its way onto YouTube, to his great chagrin.
And too much physical contact can be - well, too much. Democrat Bill Richardson, renowned for his skill at retail politicking, embarrassed himself this summer by tickling the head of a young woman at a baseball game - in front of a writer for The New Republic magazine, who duly reported the bizarre interaction.
Each of the presidential hopefuls has his or her own style, with its strengths and drawbacks.
Mitt Romney brims with enthusiasm when he meets people, who usually respond in kind. But he can seem awkward when confronted with emotion.
Democrat John Edwards is all earnestness and eye contact, but he often runs late - because he spends extra time with voters earlier in the day - leaving him less time to answer questions one-on-one as the day goes on.
Democratic rival Barack Obama enjoys one-on-one time with voters, though his bulging crowds - not to mention his phalanx of Secret Service minders - make that increasingly difficult. He, too, sometimes lingers long after he's done speaking, shaking hands and signing autographs. After a few hundred people left his appearance in Hampton earlier this summer, only he and a handful of stragglers remained in the muggy school gym.
John McCain lacks some of the light-hearted energy that helped his grass-roots campaign win the New Hampshire primary in 2000, but seems buoyant when meeting new people - and greeting old supporters who show up along the trail. When a voter asks him to sign one of his books, he writes not only his name but also a message inside. A prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, he has instant rapport with veterans, often pulling them in for an embrace and saying quietly, "Thank you for your service."
"He talks from the heart because he's been there," said Joseph Vitale, 62, of Surry, a Vietnam veteran who waited to greet McCain after a Thursday rally at a VFW post in Concord.
For a New Yorker with a tough-guy image, Republican Rudy Giuliani seems at ease during obligatory flesh-pressing sessions. During a recent New Hampshire swing at Chez Vachon, an eatery in the heart of Manchester's historically French-Canadian West Side, he leaned over a diner's shoulder.
"How's breakfast? It looks good," he said. "What's that?" he asked another patron.
"Crepes with strawberries," the diner answered. Displaying exaggerated interest, Giuliani pulled his eyeglasses out of his pocket so he could inspect the contents of the man's plate. He got a few laughs.
The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is a recurring theme in New Hampshire, and Giuliani, a Yankees fan of some renown, takes the disarming approach. "Red Sox, Red Sox, Red Sox," a portly man wearing a bright red Sox T-shirt greeted him outside Chez Vachon.
Giuliani flashed a toothy smile as they shook hands: "We'll show 'em we can be friends."
Hillary Clinton has a tough act to follow - her husband, an inexhaustible campaigner with a legendary ability to bond with voters. Yet she has also benefited from low expectations; many New Hampshire voters who had seen her from afar as coldly analytical have been pleasantly surprised seeing her up close.
"What impressed me was how warm and direct she was, and how deep her understanding of people seemed to be - she seemed to understand why people would perceive her the way they did," said state Senator Maggie Wood Hassan, a Democrat who has not yet endorsed a candidate. "She is very comfortable in her own skin, and she interacts with people in a way that suits her; she is not Bill Clinton, and I don't think she's trying to be."
Clinton has also won fans by emphasizing her experience as a woman and as a mother. When she visited the Swan Chocolates Dessert Cafe in Nashua last May, Theresa Anderson, who owns the shop with her husband, Michael, greeted her at the door, holding her infant daughter in her arms. Clinton asked to hold the child, Anderson said. Back in her mother's arms a bit later, the baby began to cry because she needed a nap.
"She said, 'I do have one piece of advice for you as a mother - never wake a sleeping child,' " Anderson recalled. "She was making a connection to us as parents."
Romney, a father of five and grandfather of 10, shows off his considerable experience with young children wherever he goes. At "Ask Mitt Anything" town meetings, he sometimes picks out a baby in the audience and guesses the child's age - with remarkable accuracy. At a stop in Manchester this summer, he slid into a booth next to a mother and her toddler, who looked alarmed at the cameras flashing all around. "Isn't that silly? Isn't that silly?" he bantered with the child, wagging his head, not seeming to mind looking a bit silly himself.
But Romney is not as physically demonstrative as some candidates - like Thompson, who is big on shoulder gripping and holding handshakes for more than a minute.
At a recent event in Berlin, a struggling city in northern New Hampshire, a man missing his front teeth greeted Romney and began to tear up as he told him he had cancer - the result, he said, of exposure to Agent Orange during three tours in Vietnam.
"The government won't recognize it," said Edward Bergeron, 66, still choked up. "And they keep telling me . . ."
"What kind of cancer is it?" Romney asked.
"Stomach," Bergeron said. "And Bush is cutting a lot of our medical benefits."
Romney spoke with him for several minutes, asking about what kind of care he was getting. But the former Massachusetts governor kept his hands stiffly in front of him, only once, for the briefest second, touching the man on the elbow. Romney twice mentioned the need to reanalyze the statistics linking cancer and Agent Orange.
Asked about the interaction - which Bergeron later gave favorable reviews - Romney said he was comfortable with his approach.
"I love what Popeye said, which is, 'I am what I am, and that's all that I am,' and so I'm not going to fake it in any way," he said. "I think you can communicate your feelings by paying attention carefully and looking in a person's eyes, and that shows that I really do feel your pain, and I am concerned about you, rather than saying it and having people wonder whether you just said that to make it sound like you cared."
But that doesn't mean the campaign isn't sensitive to the suggestion that Romney lacks warmth. A couple of days after the interview, his press aide e-mailed a reporter four pictures of Romney giving voters big hugs.
Scott Helman and Brian C. Mooney of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent James W. Pindell contributed to this report. Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com. 