Obama rocks Granite State
news.bostonherald.com
<<...The collapse of the primary calendar means this could be the last New Hampshire primary of real significance.
We are moving, inexorably and without serious debate, to a national primary. On TV - with all that entails.
I came up here over the weekend to see the candidates the way people in New Hampshire get to see them.
In the case of Hillary, she is really very good before a crowd, as she was in the Concord High School gymnasium. If this were a chief executive up on stage, taking questions at a stockholders’ meeting, you’d be impressed.
Her problem, though, is up close and personal. In smaller groups her voice is too strident, her eyes too wide. Her smile snaps off and on like a neon sign.
Some people stared at the floor while she talked. One or two snuck off to the refreshments bar.
If she had a stronger connection with primary voters, her awkward vote on Iraq probably wouldn’t hurt so much.
As for Barack Obama: The hackneyed phrase “rock star” doesn’t begin to capture it. Rarely will you see someone so at ease with a crowd. At the University of New Hampshire he came across more as the most popular professor on campus. He even talks like it. Long, nuanced replies. That mellifluous voice.
This should not be a surprise: He was a law professor at the University of Chicago - ironically, America’s top conservative school - for 10 years before going into politics.
After Obama finished speaking he made his way through the crowd - shaking hands, grinning, joking, laughing - toward the door.
The fact that the primary season has started so early can hardly be good news for Sen. Clinton.
A year is a long time to stay “inevitable” - especially somewhere as intimate as New Hampshire...>> |
