Quiet on the New Hampshire front

By Jim Tankersley

NASHUA, N.H. -- An eerie calm has settled over America's kick-off primary state this New Year's Eve, and it has little to do with the fresh snow blanket that fell last night.

With most eyes and nearly every major candidate focusing on Iowa, whose caucuses officially start the presidential nomination process on Thursday, New Hampshire seems oddly out of the spotlight a week before its Jan. 8 primaries.

Republican Sen. John McCain, who has largely skipped Iowa, and Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, currently languishing on the brink of statistical irrelevance in national polls, were the only candidates to campaign in the Granite State today. They're both back on the trail here tomorrow, in limited New Year's engagements. Republican Rudolph Giuliani hits the state on Wednesday.

But voters don't have to look far for signs of the major players currently squeezing every ethanol-infused drop of support from Iowa. It seems Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pop up every other minute on television, in the sort of swellingly patriotic ads that make you want to ring in 2008 with a John Philip Souza album (and maybe, you know, vote next week). Republican Mitt Romney is also in heavy rotation with ads dinging McCain on taxes and immigration.

While some states would celebrate a bit of a break from what can be a maddening crush of candidates - a trip to Florida mid-December revealed several locals there were delighted that Democrats have largely decided to skip their state's late-January primary, which was moved up in the calendar over the national party's objections - New Hampshire residents are showing no signs of politics withdrawal.

"I don't sense that New Hampshiremen are in the least tired, bored, exhausted, or annoyed with our primary," Joe McQuaid, publisher of the Union-Leader newspaper, wrote in a column this morning. "It has come too darned early, pushing right up against Christmas and New Year's. So it's a little harder to get our bearings.

"But Granite Staters appreciate our role in President-picking. A lot of us will vote one week from tomorrow. It is tough to figure the percentage of turnout because of unaffiliated voters; but we could have 50 percent of each main party turning out. That's a heck of a lot more representative than the tiny numbers that turn out for those hours-long caucus things in Iowa."

(McQuaid also has a great line about the joys of TiVoing campaign ads: "Romney and Clinton seem to have bought up every available minute of TV time, but all I know from [watching at fast-forward speed] is that Ms. Hillary has 82 years of experience and Mr. Mitt has John Edwards' hair but in plastic form.")

The scene will get crazy enough on Friday, when campaign teams and reporters decamp from Iowa and head here. If you can't wait that long for your New Hampshire fix, rest assured, we'll keep you covered in the Swamp this week.

And if you're desperate for a primer -- old, but awesome, we assure you -- on the state's primary and its history, we suggest this State Department briefing for foreign press from 2004, which includes some useful overviews from an unnamed "Elected Official from New Hampshire" and some delightfully dated analysis of the Democratic field at the time.