New Hampshire: Live Safe or Die

I didn't think the polls could maintain a perfect record of predicting the primary/caucus victors for very long, but I didn't realize New Hampshire would give us the first real surprise victor of the 2008 primary season. Of course, this surprise victor was the expected winner a few weeks ago, so nothing too shocking has occurred. Nonetheless, Barack Obama seemed to have everything going for him after his caucus victory in Iowa. Recent New Hampshire polls showed him with a decent lead over his nearest Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and his supporters across the country were energized and prepared for another celebration. Clinton, however, played the role of buzz-killer by winning the New Hampshire Democratic primary by a narrow margin over Obama. John McCain's victory in the Republican primary was predicted by the polls, but he was also in a tight two-way race with Mitt Romney. Both McCain and Clinton are comeback kids to an extent -- McCain struggled in early polls and led a fiscally irresponsible early campaign, causing some to count him out well before a single vote was cast, while Clinton has been overshadowed in recent weeks by the energetic and charismatic Obama. What was it about these two that won over New Hampshire?

The winners in Iowa, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama, share a common weakness. Neither of them have a reputation for being well-versed on foreign policy; by association, this suggests they might not be the best people, to use a very hackneyed phrase, to keep America safe. This is much more of a real weakness for Huckabee, I think, because he has already made several public gaffes when speaking on foreign policy, with Pakistan being his real Achilles heel so far. Obama had a questionable Pakistan moment of his own earlier in the campaign, but he seems overall more comfortable with foreign policy issues than Huckabee. The big national security related question mark hovering over Obama is his inexperience, and Hillary Clinton has been very careful not to let anyone forget it. Huckabee is even more inexperienced in foreign policy -- it's just not something governors deal with to the extent that senators do. Huckabee and Obama's victories in Iowa, thus, probably had very little to do with foreign policy or national security; instead, Iowa voters seemed to have domestic and social issues first and foremost in their minds.

I don't want to paint the New Hampshire voter as being a reactionary force that was merely responding to the vote in Iowa, but I do think the New Hampshire primary voters had very different issues in mind compared to the voters in Iowa when they cast their votes. Most of the Republican candidates have tried to win their party's nomination by focusing on national security, but I've thought John McCain has had an edge over all the rest on this single issue from the start. I associate McCain's name with the troop surge in Iraq right along with the names of George Bush and David Petraeus. He's a military man. He's extremely experienced in dealing with national security issues. As tough an opponent he was to George Bush in 2000, McCain is in 2008 now quite suited to take on the Bush mantle. The only way Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, or Duncan Hunter can challenge McCain is through rhetoric -- none of those candidates has a record comparable to McCain's from a national security standpoint alone. In New Hampshire, though, Romney is well-known as the governor of Massachusetts, and he campaigned hard and spent freely in the state. It made sense for him to finish second. Giuliani, I think, was his own worst enemy -- his "big state strategy" was so public that it undermined his own hard work in New Hampshire. Still, Giuliani did narrowly finish ahead of Ron Paul, the only Republican to completely repudiate President Bush's foreign policy. Thompson and Hunter were also their own worst enemies, but for a different reason: they didn't give themselves much of a chance in New Hampshire because they didn't devote their time and energy into the state. Huckabee probably feels pretty pleased to finish 3d in a state that seemed pretty focused on national security considering how recently he made his series of foreign policy gaffes; however, I think that voters elsewhere will need to be more focused on domestic and social issues if he is to win the Republican nomination.

On the Democratic side of the race, there is quite a clash in views when it comes to foreign policy. Several candidates are running on a peace platform and promise an approach to American foreign policy that will be utterly unlike what was seen during the Bush administration. Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson perhaps ought to have appealed more to Iowan voters than the results indicated because they do very much believe that most all American problems can be solved at home, rather than abroad. They studiously avoid the politics of fear, but can be criticized for not focusing enough on national security issues. These three candidates were essentially afterthoughts in New Hampshire -- Richardson, experienced in foreign policy and a supporter of the military, did the best by winning nearly 5% of the vote, but he still finished a distant fourth here just as he did in Iowa. While Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards have all had harsh words to say about the war in Iraq since they began running for president, these three candidates don't advocate an immediate withdrawal from Iraq unlike Richardson, Gravel, and Kucinich. Obama and Edwards, though, are more focused on domestic issues, and neither have really presented themselves as a "national security" candidate in the Republican mold. Hillary Clinton, though, has done just that. She constantly points to her experience as evidence that she will be ready to lead through tough times. She essentially warns people about voting for Obama because he is so inexperienced that it might be unsafe to elect him. I think this message worked for Hillary in New Hampshire, but she doesn't have the edge over her fellow Democrats that John McCain has over the other Republicans. I just can't quite buy that being the spouse of a president gives experience comparable to actually serving in government; granted, Clinton was an active First Lady who was regularly in the spotlight, but most associate her with health care reform, not foreign policy or national security. When it comes right down to it, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are all inexperienced senators in my view -- McCain will win the battle of years of public service every time. The presidency is no award for service, however, and I don't think national security issues alone will decide the ultimate winner or even the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees.