The Spirit of New Hampshire

...The Deaniacs then burst through the line, and the Kerry supporters start pushing back...

...peacekeeping forces...

...After sustaining a sore throat and a week of nightmare press, Howard Dean appears to be sucking back his own words even as he says them, causing Joshua Green of the Atlantic Monthly, sitting next to me in the press room, to comment, "It sounds like a guy trying to hold in a bong hit...

...As I wait for my turn, I gaze around the office, which looks like that of an alternative newspaper edited by John Lennon...

...He's not, he assures me...

...This is, after all, a place that thrives on journalistic cliches, as evidenced by an entire chattering class of adults who spent the week being scandalized by Howard Dean's exclamatory "yee-hawwww," after his third-place finish in Iowa...

...it's time for Waving for Wes...

...As I talk to several Wes-wavers who admit such exercises are nearly pointless, I ask one why they do it...

...In the parking lot next to the venue at St...

...And I think the people of New Hampshire appreciate someone who's both specific and SPIRITED...

...But he also lets the Exeter audience know that he's their kind of people, rattling off his prep school pedigree...

...The debate itself, as has now been well-documented, is boring beyond description...

...The next morning, I wake up not feeling so well...

...Perhaps the rock'n'roll bacchanal that was once synonymous with the name "Dick Gephardt...

...While she extols his going into battle as "a lieutenant, not a general" (an obvious swipe at Wes Clark, who had earlier bragged of outranking Kerry), she awkwardly concludes by saying, "I would like to be in a foxhole with him...

...Cool," he says...

...We're going to Main Street...

...He failed to utter the magic word during the debate, but a man of honor, he seeks to make amends...

...As Iraq comes to define the election, only he provides a clear-cut alternative to Bush, as someone who was against the war and wants to bring our troops home immediately, replacing them with U.N...

...He can choose the word...

...Anselm's College, staffers and volunteers of all stripes see who can out-chant whom...

...So the inaugural ride will become the inaugural walk, in which Lieberman, and a throng of rabid "Joe"-chanting supporters, will pin hapless yet "flinty" potential voters against the "quaint" storefronts of Papa John's, CVS, and Dunkin Donuts...

...Those are real people...

...As I take my place among a group of reporters with no knowledge of our agreement, Kucinich, apropos of nothing, launches into the following, proving that sometimes the absurdity of these spectacles is its own reward...

...While everyone is on edge, anxious to see if Howard Dean overcomes his gaffes and makes up his lost lead, something seems to be missing...

...We're going to Merrimack...

...But he doesn't...

...Though the temperature is subfreezing, she has neither a hat, nor gloves...

...As Kucinich pops his head out of his office door, he shushes us in the waiting room, telling us our chatter is ruining the audio for a television crew...

...But appearances by the candidates themselves follow a time-honored pecking order: the worse a candidate is doing, the more you see of him...

...Lieberman's bus, however, is hung up in traffic...

...Spirit," he says...

...You think I'm kidding," he says when I permit a slight smile, thinking about him stuck at 4 percent in the polls...

...Tonight, he's not actually serving chili, but that doesn't mean that the guitar-picking wind-surfer can't show off a new hat—or an old one to be more precise—that of a blue-blooded child of privilege...

...Just then, a car drives by, spying the Clark signs and giving the thumbs-up...

...What I want to say is, these debates could have been more SPIRITed...

...George Bush is in a State of Denial"), she tells me she doesn't need any more layers: The excitement of the campaign is such that "I'm warm in my heart...

...Because he has a secret weapon: "unlimited chutzpah...

...For the last five Wednesdays, a group of 30 or so young campaign staffers, or Wes-wavers, have taken to street-corners, braving frostbite and heckling car horns and extended middle digits to sway sentiments toward The General...

...As she waits for her son to come out and roast some warm chestnuts ("State of the Union...

...From the moment you touch down here, you sense a chicken-or-egg dynamic: It's unclear if the trivial is being made to seem important, or the important, trivial...

...It would have been better television...

...The freaks were also out in force...

...On the Internet, the Exeter event was billed as a "Chili-feed," a campaign staple that has allowed Kerry to be all things to all people (he's gigged with Moby, invited reporters to watch him play pick-up hockey, and even posed for WindSur^er magazine...

...Still, you wouldn't know it outside...

...Wow," says one volunteer, "that wasn't even one of our staffers...

...The whole thing plays like a battle scene from Braveheart, or it would've if Braveheart had featured a man dressed like a giant penis getting hip-checked into a snow-bank...

...I ask her what kind of son would let his aged mother cool her heels in this weather...

...When my turn comes, the staunch vegan is enjoying a bowl full of oatmeal and a styrofoam cup of hot lemon-water, which he trades for a paper cup, since, he says, the acidity of the lemon absorbs the styrofoam...

...He's been nothing but friendly, but at this, he grows impatient...

...However, the tone of the debate enabled me to get my SPIRIT out about the issues of trade, the war, education...

...Clark, in his defense, packs a mean sack, even if he drops an old woman's diet cookies...

...After an hour, I'm down Elm Street to the next pseudo-event: the launching of Joe Lieberman's bus, the Integrity One...

...Inside of Dennis Kucinich's bustling Manchester headquarters, he's consented to a slew of one-on-one's with reporters...

...BY MATT LABASH Manchester, New Hampshire OWING TO geographic and time-travel limitations, Cicero never made it to the New Hampshire primaries...

...But despite all the "quaint" towns and "flinty" locals—as the newspaper guild requires hacks to designate all places and people in New Hampshire—it is, as one visitor tells me, a peek "inside the fishbowl—the ultimate Finding Nemo...

...John Edwards and Clark make a brief showing, while Lieberman takes a few extra passes...

...Despite all the blow-back, they "stay positive, like John Edwards," says one, who's dutifully, if not sarcastically, feeding me back a journalistic cliche...

...I half expect him to tell me to get lost...

...A man in a giant penis costume posing as a candidate offers all sorts of phallic campaign promises: He will "reform the penal code," he will "foster intercourse between nations," etc...

...A sucker for directness, I'm utterly charmed by Kucinich...

...He's convinced no nominee will pick up 50 percent of the delegates by the convention, that he will push the fight all the way, and ultimately become his party's nominee...

...But before Lieberman shows, his wheelchair-bound 89-year-old mother is rolled out to wait for him...

...Paul's and that his daughter and father went to Andover, he jokingly begs for mercy since his wife used to be a trustee at Exeter...

...We're doing it for you, you assholes...

...I wasn't on the ground for 45 minutes before I found myself on a frozen downtown street corner, waving for Wes Clark (a Clark press release, one of 50 or so that come from the campaigns each day, reminded us that "if it's Wednesday, Matt Labash is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...I ask him to sign A Prayer for America, his campaign book, which I now call "my bible," so that I can flip it on eBay...

...It's an ugly little affair in which throngs of journalists clog supermarket aisles, with photographers angrily barking at each other as each tries to capture the perfect backdrop of Clark standing in front of Velveeta cheese-spread boxes...

...Launching into a Dadaist recitation of every subject from her childhood in Mozambique to Marilyn Monroe, she offers that one of the reasons she thinks her husband should be president is "because I'm getting older...

...There's no such luck for the rest of us, who catch the Exeter town hall appearance of John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz, or Teresa Heinz-Kerry, as she prefers to be called during campaign years...

...I don't remember him talking like this in Iowa," he says...

...He chews his oatmeal thoughtfully...

...If you're a candidate, it's a swell thing to have a bus...

...And he is right...

...Taking the stage of one of the elite prep school's halls, decked with marble columns and framed portraits of long-ago trustees looking distinguished in goopy oils, Heinz lives up to her well-earned reputation for saying just about anything...

...In fact, we get along so well that I ask him to send out a special coded message to me in that night's Democratic debate—a word that's not too inevitable, like "peace," but not too obscure, like "rutabaga...

...A line of Deaniacs obstruct the way, causing Kerry and company to knock into the back of their bagpipers, who are getting their kilts flipped up and worse...

...I kill the rest of the afternoon watching Wes Clark bag groceries at Sully's Superette...

...At this, my former colleague Crossfire-host Tucker Carlson, sitting next to me, nearly chokes on his Nicorette gum...

...She socks me in the arm—either playfully or just feebly, because she is an octogenarian who's been left out in the elements and is unable to muster more force...

...Everywhere are clippings taped to the wall, and peace-themed literature, befitting the candidate who has espoused a Department of Peace...

...Other reporters busy themselves by making fun of the candidates' physical characteristics, or by writing mock headlines for tomorrow's paper, such as "Safety First...

...Kucinich supporters, greatly outnumbered but with a healthy dose of what they call "Dennis Power," hijack the proceedings with bucket drummers and dancers, out-funk-ifying the more vanilla Dean supporters...

...For a moment, Kerry's bus, the "Real Deal Express," almost grinds its candidate into the pavement as it hurtles down the hill...

...In the spin room afterwards, stanchions are placed on a gym floor with each candidate's name posted on them...

...It seems I've come down with a touch of Kucinich Fever...

...It's a deal...

...I couldn't have said it better myself...

...Kerry sounds all his usual themes, including the obligatory dozen or so allusions to his military service...

...Leavening the reprimand, he whispers, "Peace," and pops his head back in...

...In the light of Dean's meltdown, all the frontrunners seem intent on being their campaign-brochure selves, only less so...

...Still, he anticipated them when he said, "A most wretched custom is our electioneering and scrambling for office...

...Or they didn't vote for the war, but support a limited occupation...

...What would you guys be saying if you didn't see anyone out here...

...As the Wes-wavers take their places, Vinny Solomeno, a volunteer who's here with his cousin ("Cousins for Clark," they call themselves) shouts stage directions in an imitative Dean bellow: "We're going to Granite Ave...

...Up at the campus's Dominic Hill, John Kerry prepares to march down to the debate with a firefighter's union and their bagpiping corps, who are playing something that sounds like Dean funeral music...

...Admitting that he went to St...

...Earlier last year, the ketchup heiress told Elle that "you have to have a prenup...

...Almost everything in the state is tainted by overkill or hype...

...As a fledgling candidate, it's good to have a marketable skill to fall back on...

...Instead, they find that they're in a dreary hole next to a Macy's parking lot, that the bar often closes by 10, and that the toilets are installed too low, making even short people feel like NBA players when they sit on them, which I wouldn't recommend...

...You're drinking plastic," he warns...

...As I approach Kucinich, he spies me, and immediately looks shamed...

...On it, you can talk to your press corps about your best attributes—like your integrity, for one...

...The main event, however, comes that evening at the umpteenth Democratic presidential debate...

...Rookie reporters check into Bedford's Wayfarer Inn—perhaps the most storied hotel on the campaign trail—half expecting the hotel bar to be haunted by grizzled newspapermen with hollow legs full of lager...

...Consequently, frontrunners Kerry and Dean don't even make an appearance...

...And Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich are probably still holding court...

...The manager says she'd hire him if he'd fill out an application...

...With ferret-like movements, he lands next to me, and tells me how the frontrunners in his party have stepped into a Republican-sprung bear trap on Iraq: They either voted for the war, and pretend that they didn't...