Wesley Clark, Waiting for the Voters to Thaw
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 27, 2003; Page C01
One in a series of reports from the New Hampshire primary campaign
BERLIN, N.H. -- As an Army general officer, Wesley K. Clark commanded thousands of troops in hot spots around the globe. As supreme allied commander of NATO, he helped bring down foreign dictators and lived in a "magnificent Flemish-style chateau with five gardeners, a tennis court and newly renovated interior fixtures," as he once described it.
As a presidential candidate Clark now finds himself in the chilly vestibule of the Fraser Papers mill in far northern New Hampshire, on a concrete floor sloppy with slush, virtually begging the shift workers to talk to him.
"Hi, I'm Wesley Clark and I'd like to ask for your vote."
"Hi, I'm Wes . . .
"You have kids?"
"Want a doughnut? Coffee? We have coffee!"
The men are clocking in for the 7:30 a.m. shift. They walk in and out, alone or in pairs. Almost all are armored in thick coats and gloves, some wearing safety glasses and hard hats. "I'm real late," says one. "My boss . . . " he starts, and then drifts off. "I'm a Gephardt guy," yells another as he swings open the door, sending a gust of frigid wind straight up into the nostrils.
When someone does stop, Clark bores in: "You married? Children? Any health issues?" "I gotta go," David Carey finally says, and Clark follows him out the door into the muddy snow, holding out a fistful of campaign brochures.
When Clark announced he would not campaign in Iowa and instead concentrate on New Hampshire, this is the fate he chose. "Less than 50 days to go," he will say that week, meaning less than 50 days until the Jan. 27 primary, less than 50 days to catch up to Howard Dean, who floats like a smiley-face helium balloon over the Democratic field. On paper, Clark could be the natural alternative to Dean, a former four-star general in a time of war, a centrist Democrat, but he still has to prove it.
The urgency has made Clark the immigrant striver of the campaign, trying really hard to get ahead but not necessarily speaking the language. This one campaign day last week he will drive eight hours and 300 miles through fog and icy roads and 20-mile-an-hour crosswinds. ("Drive safely. Try and keep those cars on the road," one radio host says to close their interview.) In 12 hours of campaigning, starting at the morning mill shift, he will see a total of maybe 150 voters in this state's relatively barren, frozen north, an average of about 12 an hour. And he will strain desperately to say something to any of them, no matter how blank their expressions.
"Do you make the doughnuts right here?" he asks the cashier at the Dunkin' Donuts.
"No."
"So how do they get here?"
"A truck."
So eager is he that in Littleton he sweeps up 11-year-old Tammariah Guevin -- who is walking home from school -- into his campaign entourage, takes her to a candy store to buy a chocolate turtle, and only after it's dark realizes that she doesn't know how to get home and hasn't called her mother. So eager is he that on a recent trip he actually wore a hole in his shoe and had to detour to a store to buy a new pair.
"I'm not a professional politician," Clark tells his audiences, and the lack of tradecraft shows. At his town hall meetings, his answer to a single policy question can run 15 minutes, complete with detailed percentages. He can drift off into Al Gore-ish techno-idolatrous/green Earth dreams, about electric highways or buffalo roaming free in Montana. He can talk himself into strange alleys, like his recent verbal bio that began with his experience as a teenage camp counselor and somehow ricocheted back to "I want to be camp counselor of America . . . at whatever age I'll be."
But no one could fault him for not trying. At the recent candidate debate here, after everyone else had moved on to the spin room, Clark stayed an extra half-hour taking questions from the audience as his staff tried to hustle him along. Instead of the instant empathy most politicians have mastered, he's still trying for the real thing.
"When he talks to people he's not thinking, 'How do I connect to this person?' but 'How do I impress them?' " says one senior adviser. "He has this head-of-the-class, eager-beaver type of attitude, as opposed to certain professional politicians who think, 'Okay, this situation calls for empathy. I have to answer this question like I have empathy.' "
In late September, just after he announced his candidacy, Clark made his first trip to this capital of retail politics. On his first stop he walked into a mob scene waiting for him at the Merrimack Restaurant in Manchester and had his first lesson in what politicians have to do that ordinary humans never would. He walked from table to table, interrupting people eating their lunch. He made halting chitchat with a waitress about the salad. He talked with his back to the cameras.
Since then he's learned a lot about the personal touch people here expect from their candidates. At a town hall meeting about a month ago, a military veteran told Clark he had served for 12 years and then asked to take a picture with him. Clark nodded politely, took the picture and walked away. A few steps out he spun back, found the guy and said, "Thank you for your service to this country," and took his hand.
"It was like a light bulb went off in his head and he said, 'I get it,' " recalls his state director, Steve Bouchard. "He figured out for himself what he needs to do."
Now at the Tea Bird's Cafe in downtown Berlin he seems entirely comfortable. He plants himself in the middle of a table of locals, and ropes in stragglers at nearby tables. He somehow manages to get through his omelet while talking to them about companies shipping jobs overseas, polluters going free, about this place being a "microcosm of everything that's wrong in this country" but also its potential, why "it's the greatest place on Earth."
If people here are cynical about politics it might be because they have earned it. The story of this town is a one-note opera that centers around the fortunes of the paper mill. On Sept. 10, 2001, the mill shut down, leaving 830 people out of work for nine months. Most of those laid off were men in their forties and fifties who'd never worked anywhere else.
The mill was sold and 600 people rehired, but it is now struggling again. Last month 129 workers were laid off.
"Kids don't want to come back here and live like their fathers did," says Gary Newfield, who sat with Clark at the cafe. "They go to college, then get a job in Concord."
There are far fewer voters here than in the southern part of the state, but competition for them is intense. Dean is considered to have a lock on the elite university towns, so the other candidates are fighting for the soul of the working class. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) has the support of the union at the mill. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) was endorsed by an influential local leader, Paul Robitaille, chairman of the Coos County Democratic Committee.
But Clark doesn't give up. "How can we stop the imports?" one diner asks. "The stuff we make over here they can make over there and pay people half a dollar an hour." And suddenly Clark is in pleasing overdrive.
"I'd very much like your support. I'll spread the word. I'm not a politician. I'll fix it, I'll do what's right. I will put America back to work." And he gives the specifics of his manufacturing plan: end tax breaks that encourage companies to go overseas, a $10,000 tax credit for each full-time hire.
One of the people at the table is Robitaille. He endorsed Kerry early on, before Clark joined the race and when Kerry was still the front-runner. Now he sounds a little regretful -- "I'm not going back on my word. I gave my word," he says.
Clark dispatches Gene Caulfield, his brother-in-law, to follow him to the corner of the restaurant. Robitaille tries to squeeze past a chair, but he's trapped.
"Could you change your mind?" Caulfield says. "It really would help us out a lot."
Robitaille is positive but evasive. "His military experience would make a big difference. And my goal is to win 2004. The way I look at it, no harm in taking the opportunity to meet them all."
After a radio interview, Clark gets into the van for the long drive to Dixville Notch, a remote town that centers around the massive resort hotel the Balsams. The place is famous for being the first town in the nation to cast votes in the primary and the general election. At midnight, the residents gather at the Ballot Room of the hotel and all vote simultaneously. The results will make the local papers on election day before anyone else has voted.
The hotel opens for the winter season the following day, so the staff is busily setting up. Upstairs, the political version of high-end hospitality is unfolding. This year 23 residents of Dixville Notch are registered to vote. Twelve are registered Republicans, 11 are independents, none is a Democrat. When Clark asks how many registered voters are there that day, eight or so raise their hands. Each one receives a specially prepared red envelope with a personalized note from Clark. "I think you'd be hard pressed to find better-informed voters than the people who cast their votes first in the nation," it reads.
After the long, treacherous drive, this audience the size of a family has to feel like a letdown. Clark launches into his "turnaround plan" for America but doesn't go through all the details, summarizing it and then opening the floor for questions.
Clark has been briefed extensively in the car on the town's history, but his mind is wandering. He calls it "Dixville Gulch," then "Dixville Gap," then gives up and just sticks with "Dixville." The voters here are still impressed. Donna Kaye Erwin, a registered independent, says Clark is "strong, a straight shooter." She's not committed yet, though.
After the three-hour drive, the personal folders, the intimate chat, the most she'll say is, "He'll be one of the ones we're looking at." |
