Mitt Romney Is the Only One Who Can Overcome Obama

The elections in the U.S. do not really start until New Hampshire wakes up. This week, it hosted the presidential candidates. Is there anyone able to stop Romney?

On Tuesday afternoon, a sunny day when the autumn wind is blowing, I was waiting with a rather small group of journalists and the curious for presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. White hair, parted on the side, no longer as young as he once was but still vigorous, he came in his turn to complete the forms making him an official candidate for the presidency in the state of New Hampshire.

Without the forms, one can’t contend, and Newt Gingrich, as stated, is an unexceptional contender. It’s unclear why, exactly, no one believes he stands a chance; on the day he submitted the papers, according to a poll by the New York Times, only 8 percent of the Republican voters support him. But no matter what, he moves on.

The managing director of Gingrich’s campaign in New Hampshire is a 29-year-old guy, Andrew Hemingway. He was quite an activist in the conservative tea party movement, but he has never run a political campaign. This is what Gingrich can find for the moment — Hemingway, plus two or three more advisers he hired toward the weekend. And maybe this is all he wants. Over the last two months, he has managed to raise a little more money, but lost most of his political aides.

He is a candidate in trouble who still stays optimistic. New Hampshire could be his breakthrough window. New Hampshire could propel him back to the place that in the eyes of his supporters seems natural — the top of the candidates’ league. He possesses political experience from Washington superseding that of his competitors; he has already been in the environment for years and years; he is the only one among them who successfully confronted and beat one Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

It was many years ago that Clinton was a president and when Gingrich was the Republican leader who conquered the House of Representatives like a storm. But Gingrich remembers. He was not the first, nor the last to file his candidate papers. Many more contenders have come in the past few days to the house of legislators of the state of New Hampshire, at 107 North Main Street. Former Senator Rick Santorum and former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman hurried to check in ahead of time. Even Vice President Joe Biden, who submitted forms for his boss, Barack Obama — the candidate of the rival party — has already been here.

Concord: Candidacy

Monday, 24 hours before Gingrich, the Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney made it here as well. Of course, there were a lot more journalists and supporters who showed up in his honor. On a small stage set at the foot of the house of legislators, there stood, by Romney’s side, the former governor of New Hampshire, John Sununu. Sununu was the head of this state thrice, though in Israel his name would only ring a bell for those who still remember his days as the White House chief of staff for President Bush the senior.

Four years ago, when Romney lost here to John McCain, Sununu maintained a cool neutrality. Now, he is off the fence. When asked why he thought Romney had a better shot at his party’s nomination this time around, Sununu joked, “Because I endorsed him!” Romney confidently leads in the polls — but not in the nationwide ones. The surprise candidate Herman Cain, a businessman who made his fortune selling pizza, is ahead of the game in those surveys.

The black candidate is a dark horse of the race as well, at least for now. Anyone who is acquainted with how the campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination is carried out does not ascribe critical importance to the national polls. What is far more important are the local surveys in the states voting first. Iowa, in early January, then straight after it New Hampshire, and after them South Carolina, the crucial Florida and Nevada.

Presumably, before the rounds in these states end, a considerable part of the present candidates would not be in the race any longer. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has no chance unless she comes up with a very good achievement in Iowa. Her contingent is there. Gingrich has nothing to look for in the competition unless he pulls a good result in Iowa or New Hampshire, desirably in both of them.

And what about Romney? Romney has to win here. To come first. Any other outcome would be an echoing failure demanding a colossal effort to recover from it. Seemingly, he’s in great shape to do that — win in New Hampshire. As an ex-governor of a neighboring state, Massachusetts, and as someone who already contended here with reasonable success in the previous elections, he is more well-known than all the other candidates, and knows more as well.

Romney owns a house in New Hampshire. And like Sununu, many state Congress members endorse him as well. On the roads of this mountainous state, there are more blue boards of Romney, who “believes in America,” than orange pumpkins of Halloween, which will fall next week.

But New Hampshire has a tradition of surprises. This is a state that takes pride in its ability to think on its own, to think contrarily, to fool experts and candidates, to stick a pin in political balloons. In a coffee house, I badgered three residents. Who you are going to vote for, I asked. One said he doesn’t know; the second said Romney; the third, David Brits, sales manager of electronics products, said, “For someone you don’t even think we’d vote for!” and roared with laughter.

Four years ago, Hillary Clinton managed to save her campaign when she defeated Obama here surprisingly, after shedding a tear at the unforgettable election event in the city of Portsmouth where she was simply asked, “How do you do it? How do you keep up…” The then-competitor candidate John Edwards hurried to attack the then-candidate Clinton.

One who cries is not fit to be president, said the smarmy man with the forelock. The women of New Hampshire responded at the polls. 46 percent of them voted for Clinton, and only 34 percent for Obama. Clinton won in New Hampshire, and today she is in the office of the secretary of state. Edwards stars on the tabloid pages: liar, traitor, adulterer, thief.

In that election round — but on the other side of the political map — the voters surprised the nation when they preferred McCain over Romney. In October 2008, Romney held a lead in the polls, precisely as he does today. It did not help him. Howard Dean led in the polls of New Hampshire in 2004 as well; nevertheless, he surrendered on election day to John Kerry. And George Bush led in 2000 yet yielded to McCain (in McCain’s previous tour as a candidate).

Walter Mondale led, too, in the 1984 polls; nevertheless, Gary Hart surprised observers and won. Bob Dole led in the 1996 polls, but lost to Pat Buchanan. Therefore, Romney must not rest, he must not assume he’s going to win. The voters want to see him, and in the coming months they are about to see him a lot. In the coffee shops, in the streets, in small meetings of voters, in clubs and private houses.

New Hampshire is a state where one needs to invest time and energy; a state of petty politics — old style. A state that, because of the early voting during each round of elections — this time, too — receives political attention exceeding the actual significance of the small state in the general elections.

On the way to Concord, a brief visit to the gravesite of Josiah Bartlett. It’s been already more than 200 years since his death at the age of 65 in 1795; his tomb lies in the same place, in Plains Cemetery in the town of Kingston. We’re talking about the senior son of New Hampshire. Someone who served as governor of the state, and was also a delegate sent to represent the state to sign the American Declaration of Independence; he was actually the first representative to vote for the American independence.

Further on, in the War of Independence, he worked in Congress, mainly on establishment of the American Navy, and in his spare hours resorted to his true profession — a physician — and treated the wounded returning from the front. “Josiah Bartlett” was also the only president from the state of New Hampshire, a very renowned president, a very popular one. Not in reality — in reality, this state had no president — but rather on TV, portrayed by Martin Sheen in the successful show “The West Wing.”

The creators of this series, with Aaron Sorkin at the helm, did not pick the name randomly. The TV Bartlett was also a former governor and former Congressman from New Hampshire, and a direct descendant of the genuine Bartlett. However, the occupation he excelled in was not medicine. The TV president was an economist, a Nobel prize winner. The kind of candidate America would like now, after four years of economic crisis with no end in sight.

This is the kind of candidate Romney would like America to believe he is like. Romney has the high, magnificent forelock of the television Bartlett. This is actually one of the key claims against him: He is a candidate who looks way too presidential, presentational, way too much like an actor who embodies a president rather than a president [himself].

At any rate, the economy and how to fix it have become the centerpiece of this election campaign. So it is throughout the entire United States, so it is as well in New Hampshire, where the economic situation is actually reasonable, relative to anyplace else. Unemployment is slightly over 5 percent — much less than the national statistic, 9 percent, but much more than this state is used to.

“Everybody is nervous,” asserted Charlie Arlinghaus, president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. “Everybody is not sure if things are getting better or getting worse, and they feel like we need to do better than we are doing now.”

Kingston: Dynasty

At the moment, the voters want Mitt Romney because he conveys a sort of confidence, and appears like one who knows what should be done in the economic field. Romney is a very wealthy, very experienced businessman. However, unlike his competitor Herman Cain and his pizza dynasty, he also has rich political experience as a former candidate for presidency and a former governor (and a son of a former governor of the state of Michigan).

A new Herman Cain campaign ad was aired Monday; a video that brought about a mini storm because of a small cigarette. In the clip appeared Cain’s campaign manager, Mark Block. He delivers a short speech in favor of his candidate and then takes a puff. Marlboro Light. An unthinkable thing — not in public, not in a serious presidential campaign. But the real question is whether Cain is serious.

The numbers say yes. He has led the contenders’ parade for several weeks, or has been very close to leading it. On the other hand, Cain does not behave like a regular candidate. He lets the chief of staff of his campaign smoke in the video ad. He’s not really organized. In fact, he is a candidate without organization. In New Hampshire, while driving, I tried to count roadside signs. Romney was at the top, followed by Ron Paul, a separatist competitor who’ll succeed this time as well in grabbing quite a few voices here — just like the previous time — but won’t be the Republican candidate; after them, Senator Santorum.

It’s difficult to concentrate on the signs because the trees are now at the height of the beautiful New England fall. Because of them, it’s possible that the sample is not truly representative — everything depends on the question of how many manage to count, and what road they take. But there were no signs for Cain — not even one. It may be that he is less interested in New Hampshire. Cain is a very conservative candidate who has staked on Iowa and South Carolina. Should he win in these two states, he could take an expected middle-way loss in Romney’s second home state.

Meanwhile, he tries to build for himself the reputation of a serious candidate who could be president. This week, he agreed to meet with Gingrich for a public debate, lengthy and detailed, to be held in Texas in November. The two are already crowning the face-off with gold. They refer to it as the “Lincoln-Douglas-style debate,” no less. In 1858, the most famous series of confrontations in the history of the American politics took place when two candidates for the Senate, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, the future president, met in seven districts within a month and a half.

The public was large, the media coverage, intensive. But those debates survived and become a classic thanks to Lincoln — twice thanks to him: Once because he lost to Douglas, when he then found time to collect the texts of all the meetings and bind them in a book. The second time because he was elected to the presidency of the United States two years later — one of the most important presidents in the American history.

Gingrich is not Lincoln, nor is Cain Douglas. But there’s a right assertion on the basis of their joint decision. The television debates between the candidates — which, by the way, enjoy relatively high interest from the audience at home this year — suffer from superficiality. Gingrich has already turned the argument against the debates into a sort of gimmick. In every debate, he repeatedly rebukes the hosts for their attempt to split and instigate the candidates against each other, to exploit the gaps between them that are not big in most cases and for most subjects just to create drama.

Either way, the two promise now that their discussion will be an in-depth, thorough deliberation. Cain will present afresh the basics of his peculiar economic plan which he calls with the catchy name 9-9-9; Gingrich will explain why this is an odd plan, and win with a hand tied behind his back. He knows more than Cain, understands more than him and is more experienced than him. Of course, all these features do not guarantee victory in the elections — neither to Gingrich nor to anyone else.

The story of this election campaign, at least till now, has been a saga of continuing tumult, of instability. Every month or two, there emerges a newish star on duty, who skyrockets in the polls until he crashes. “You got to feel bad for poor Mitt Romney,” said comedian Bill Maher a couple of weeks ago. “He’s in there plugging every week, and every week somebody gets ahead of him. The people who have led Mitt so far: Donald Trump, then Michele Bachmann, then Rick Perry, now Herman Cain. He’s been led by a reality show star, a crazy lady, a stuttering cowboy and the guy who brings the pizza. That’s gotta hurt a little.”

Anyway, Romney does not externalize his emotions; he does not show vulnerability. When the other candidates rise and fall, come and go, he’s always there — if not first in the polls, then close to that. The default candidate of the Republicans, the only candidate at the moment who looks like he could win twice — both in the party and against Obama. Not especially loved or admired, but a person whose efficient professionalism could delight. Romney is a candidate his opponents need to overcome. In the debates, he’s expertly in control, he’s got money, he’s got a well-oiled organization. And he’s got New Hampshire, the stronghold he must not lose.