The Silly Season

Not long ago I found some real treasures in a pile of junk at home that included a 1964 Red Sox yearbook, a pamphlet on Project Mercury and an envelope from the admissions office at Williams College.

There also was a "Write in Mills for President" pencil, a Vance Hartke poster, a John Ashbrook pin that implored "No Left Turn" and, yes, even a button that said: "President Muskie. Don't You Feel Better Already?" What are these assorted irrelevancies? The Ned Coll Trivia Award* goes to anyone who identifies them as campaign memorabilia from that most venerable of democratic institutions, the New Hampshire Primary.

There's something about the New Hampshire Primary that never fails to make me chuckle. I'll never forget, for example, seeing posters announcing "Nixon Appreciation Day" in Manchester, where Lainie Kazan, the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, Nelson Rockefeller and Art Linkletter led the festivities. Then there was the time Representative Paul McCloskey, a young liberal California Republican, dragged Bob Cousy and Paul Newman through the slushy streets of New Hampshire in a valiant, but extravagantly unsuccessful, attempt to unseat President Nixon. And who could forget Chub Peabody, who had in earlier days led both Harvard's football team and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, standing on top of a stationwagon ringing what was said to be a replica of the Liberty Bell ("I'm ringing the bell for democracy, folks, I'm ringing the bell for democracy") en route to what he insisted was the Vice Presidency?

That, we're told, is the American system at work, the democratic process, the pride of Jefferson and Madison - all in one.

*The prize, of course, is a rat. Ned Coll was the unforgettable candidate who dramatized his interest in urban squalor by brandishing a rat on a televised debate between candidates in the 1972 New Hampshire primary.

This year, of course, will be no different. We may not have Mayor Sam Yorty running this time, but we do have an interstate war with some Massachusetts iconoclasts who have been trying to upstage the New Hampshire spectacle. Massachusetts Senate President Kevin B. Harrington has pledged to hold the Bay State primary at "half-time at the Rose Bowl, if necessary."

So the Silly Season is upon us. Already several candidates have disrupted the sanity of Hanover with their campaign swings. Fred Harris, the self-proclaimed populist from Oklahoma who has been inveighing against big business, slipped in one wintry day last year, grabbed a free lunch at Thayer Hall and drank a few beers with the boys from Tri-Kap. "Imagine," one student commented, "we missed the opportunity to make the next President chug a beer."

Morris Udall, the Arizona Democrat whose brother served in the Kennedy Administration, marked a College-wide food crisis symposium with a non-meat dinner in the Hovey Grill and a lengthy talk that evening at Hopkins Center. And Jimmy Carter of Georgia, whose smile seems considerably wider than his chances, brought his campaign entourage through town this fall. He seemed astonished when asked why he came into the Upper Valley. "I wanted to learn about this part of the nation," he explained. "When I become President I won't be as free to move,, to visit places like Lebanon and Claremont, White River and Peterborough, so I want to learn about them now."

I don't suggest former Governor Carter does not find the people of Claremont and Peterborough absolutely captivating. But it seems clear that he and the others place Hanover on the itinerary in the hope that they, too, might find the student energy and resourcefulness that Eugene McCarthy harnessed in his 1968 Presidential campaign.

But instead of finding undergraduates clamoring for ways to do something to end a war they abhorred and were frightened by, the candidates find thoughtful conclaves of students armed with questions and snickers. As the song says, "The thrill is gone." There are eight of so candidates planning to run in New Hampshire and they all seem tied for eighth place. "Students just aren't interested in politics now the way they were in 1968," said Steve Strauss, a sophomore from Arkansas.

The candidates haven't resorted to staging touch football exhibitions between Smith and Mount Holyoke on the College

green to attract crowds (George Romney's playful contribution to the art of American political campaigning). Yet they have drawn large turnouts for their political talks. What accounts for it?

Primary time may be the Silly Season, but students are exploiting it to do some searching of their own. The candidates come to Hanover hoping to find enthusiastic hordes begging to drop their leaflets on New Hampshire doorsteps. The students come to the speeches hoping to find a candidate who's honest without being schmaltzy, a candidate who's got some reasoned and reasonable answers for the seemingly unmanageable problems we face. Students; to paraphrase James Reston, don't believe in anything anymore, but they believe in believing. They'd like to believe in one of the candidates who will plead for their support this winter.

Both groups, then, are searching and neither'is likely to be satisfied. The candidates will leave Hanover hoping they've moved some students and the students will come away with confusion, some memories of pouring beers for Fred Harris, and maybe a Milton Shapp button.