A MOST UNFLATTERING SHOW

By Garrison Keillor

Once again we ask ourselves, why exactly do we care about the New Hampshire presidential primary? And why do we care for an entire year? It may be a publicity bonanza for a state that most Americans aren't all that curious about, it may do wonders for the state's creamed-chicken industry, but do we need to spend all of 1995 reading those same handicapping stories (RACE IS DOLE'S TO LOSE, SAY INSIDERS, BUT GRAMM NARROWS GAP) and Sunday think pieces (IS PRIMARY CAMPAIGN TOO LONG AND EXPENSIVE?) decrying the shallowness and mendacity and flummery of it all?

The day Dan Quayle ankled the 1996 race I started to wonder if maybe I hadn't underrated the man. Anyone who chooses to spend 1995 at home in Indiana enjoying family life rather than preening, fawning, blithering, truckling and marketing flannel-mouthed pieties while living in motel rooms with burnt-orange carpeting is a man with the good taste and common sense we want in a President.

But there they go again. A gang of nine Republican hopefuls and hopelesses went up to Manchester for the kickoff dinner at the Holiday Inn and announced that, yes, they are conservative ever and always, my heavens, yes, and are the ones to lift the terrible yoke of government from the people's shoulders, and, no, the words tax increase never cross their lips without a sense of deep personal revulsion, and, yes, they are looking forward to visiting New Hampshire often in the weeks and months ahead. So here we are, back in the dark vale of self-abasement that is presidential campaigning.

The press would like the campaign to be as long as possible, to give it an epic sweep--great armies on the march, great men nobly surveying the terrain, great men brought down by tragic flaws (hubris, a voice that sounds like a peanut grinder, a big fishy loan, a shadowy past at the draft board, a bimbo in the closet). But it is humiliation enough just to run for President. Scandal hardly makes it worse. Scandal, in fact, endears the candidate to us. Senator Gramm, when asked why he had opted against military service in his youth, said, "It didn't make sense for a Ph.D. in economics, 26 years old, at the peak of the draft, to leave Texas A&M University and join the Army. Nobody was going to send me to Vietnam. I would have ended up working in a library or teaching at West Point." That response only makes him seem human. This is the sort of charming story that you or I might tell if cornered.

But why should Republicans be out on the hustings so soon after the midterm elections? We all know that they think. What we don't know is whether they mean it or not. Nothing that is said at a luncheon in New Hampshire makes a dime's worth of difference when the show so clearly is in Washington and the keynote figure in the party is Newt Gingrich. A lot of mouths are moving, but his is the voice we hear. Senator Dole has been in Washington so long that all his edges have worn off--when asked about burning issues, he tends to say something like, "I think we need to take a good long look at that," or, "I'm hearing a lot of people ask about that." Gingrich is out front, carrying the torch. Dole is carrying the water bucket.

A few months ago, the Republicans scraped together a majority by appealing to the sorehead vote, your brother-in-law and mine, the guys who, after a few beers, wonder why they should have to pay taxes for the schools after their kids have graduated. Anger is a primal force in politics, and if you get the good folks riled over the pointy-heads in power, you can get yourself elected, even if your own head resembles a No. 2 pencil. But then you take office and are expected to legislate anger. How do you do that? This is the Republicans' dilemma: how to breathe fire and chew up the scenery, but gently, so as not to alarm the moderate voters.

Bill Clinton's strategy is to be the President and let the Republicans shake their rattles and do their ghost dance. He can pick his battles, win a few, earn some good defeats. He can get in high dudgeon about mean-spiritedness, and when the Republicans get feverish and clammy and speak in tongues and handle snakes, he can go out to Omaha and Houston and Nashville and be charming and graceful.

The cheesy level of political debate today has favored the party on the attack, it being easier to plant fear and confusion than to explain why blah blah blah really means blah blah, as shown in diagram 4A (see footnote on page 495), which helped elect a lot of Republicans running against Big Gummint. On Election Night, I almost swallowed my gum when Senator Dole said, in an interview, "There are some things that government does well," something that no Republican has uttered in years. A man who has spent 34 years in the Federal Government must have been surprised at the vehemence his party unleashed.

But in 1996 the Democrats get to throw some cheese of their own. The Republicans are going to be the Party That Canceled the Clean Air Act and Took Hot Lunches from Children, the Orphanage Party of Large White Men Who Feel Uneasy Around Gals. No matter who the G.O.P. candidate is, he will have to defend Newt Gingrich, and there may be happier ways to spend your life.

Garrison Keillor is the host of A Prairie Home Companion, heard every Saturday night on public radio.