Hampshire Voters

We hear a lot of political rhetoric about spreading democracy around the world, but let's be clear about one thing: The United States is not a democracy pure and simple. We live in a democratic republic. We elect the officials who are responsible for carrying out our political will and looking after our best interests. As the primary election looms close on Maryland's horizon, a certain term that is used ad nauseam by political pundits goes to the heart of a flaw in our democratic republic and the democratic process: "electability."

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's response to what he called the message of "dissatisfaction" from New Hampshire voters will be to run harder and fight dirtier, White House and campaign officials said."

In February 1972, Richard Nixon was riding so high that he celebrated the advent of the New Hampshire primary by going off on his famous visit to China -- the one that later became the setting for a John Adams opera. He left behind two Republican challengers to his re-election, conservative John Ashbrook and anti-war advocate Paul McCloskey, both of whom were destined to be asterisks in the political history of their times.And yet. . . And yet, when the 1972 returns came in, 32.4 percent of the registered Republicans in the Granite State voted against Mr. Nixon.

The same Democratic wave that made history yesterday by electing Barack Obama to the presidency drowned Republicans in the House and Senate and seemed poised to give Democrats commanding power in Congress. Voters appeared to be looking for someone to blame for the state of the nation and the economy - and their wrath seemed aimed squarely at the GOP. Democrats captured Republican-held Senate seats in Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Virginia, drawing closer to a 60-vote supermajority that would ward off any Republican filibuster - the tactic that allows senators to stonewall bills - and aggressively advance their legislative agenda.

GEORGE ROMNEY died last week running in place on a treadmill. Just like his presidential campaign. Twenty-eight years ago today the same thing happened to his presidential ambitions.Romney was the governor of Michigan in 1967. He was the first Republican to announce he was running for the 1968 presidential nomination. The conservative wing of the party had taken a drubbing in 1964, and the liberal Romney was now the early front-runner.But his campaign never got out of the treadmill stage.

GORHAM, N.H. -- George W. Bush said yesterday that as president he would make moral values and discipline a focus of the nation's schools."Our children must be educated in reading and writing, but also in right and wrong," the Republican presidential candidate said. "Our schools should not cultivate confusion. They must cultivate conscience."The Texas governor decried what he described as the notion that all ideas have equal validity, saying, "We must tell our children, with conviction and confidence, that the authors of the Holocaust were evil men and the authors of the Constitution were good ones, that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not a personal opinion but an eternal truth."

NASHUA, N.H. -- Hillary Clinton began altering her campaign strategy yesterday, saying she would spend the next few days addressing doubts that voters harbor about her candidacy. Those questions were magnified by her third-place finish this week in the nation's first caucus, where Barack Obama's message of hope and change trumped Clinton's experience. A win for Clinton in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary would do much to restore optimism to a campaign whose sense of inevitability blew away in the snows of Iowa.

WHEN Bill Bradley endorsed Howard Dean last week in the Democratic presidential primary, the reaction was ho-hum - the endorsement had been expected, considering that both men appealed to similar voters. Largely overlooked was one truth of this year's astonishing Democratic primary race: that Bradley gave a big boost to Dean's insurgent bid long before his formal endorsement. By coming much closer than many people realize to pulling off an upset against Al Gore four years ago, Bradley, the former New Jersey senator, might have set the stage for Dean's more successful long-shot campaign this year.

Technology is playing a crucial role in the early campaign for the White House -- and in a way easily missed by news media. It is the political video.The videos, usually five to 15 minutes long, are extended commercials sent directly to people's homes, or used for fund-raising, organizing and recruiting potential volunteers.They illustrate how traditional campaigning, which centered on the candidates stumping the nation, is becoming a smaller part of presidential politics.Two Democrats -- Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin -- even staged their announcement speeches not merely for the nightly news, but as centerpieces for videos.

THE TWO heavyweights won the Republican and Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa on Monday night. That's not a surprise. But their margins of victory present them with sharply contrasting predicaments. Iowa was supposed to be a cakewalk for Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the genial candidate touting a centrist message as a "compassionate conservative." He gained 41 percent of the Republican caucus votes but was overshadowed by the showing of right-wing conservatives Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes.