It’s before dawn in New Hampshire, and below zero degrees outside. They keep buses running all night, because the diesel fuel can turn into glop in this kind of cold.
I covered politics in an earlier journalistic life. Today I’m back on the campaign bus in New Hampshire, riding around with Arizona Sen. John McCain, who’s leading Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the polls here.
McCain’s handlers named the bus “Straight Talk Express” after the senator’s propensity to hold forth at endless length with journalists, saying exactly what’s on his mind. Then again, the bus has an unofficial name, too…
The Guilford fire department is packed at 7:30 a.m. when McCain arrives. It’s his 93rd “Town Hall Meeting” in New Hampshire, he says.
He answers audience questions at great length. Health care, education and military affairs are the major topics.
No one asks about technology.
The expectations game is part of the primary process. Candidates try to persuade the media to look at their showings as having been better than expected, or at least as good as expected. (This is exactly what companies do with Wall Street analysts every quarter when earnings reports come out.)
McCain’s camp is buoyed by a poll, released Sunday night, showing the senator to be leading Bush by eight percentage points in New Hampshire. A reporter on the bus asks if expectations are getting pretty high.
“Well,” says McCain, “I think it’s our job to lower ’em.”
I’m here to see if technology issues are having any impact on the primary. Even if tech issues aren’t big, technology itself is making its presence felt.
The Internet has been a boost, McCain says — $1.5 million in contributions raised with almost no effort by the campaign. And 50,000 people have volunteered via the McCain 2000 Web site. And when the compaign needed petition signatures in Virginia, volunteers used the Web to help organize the effort.
The Net’s impact may not be huge this time around, he says, but this is the last election where that’ll be true. “By the next presidential race, the Internet will rule campaigns,” he says.