Clinton in New Hampshire, Like Old Times

On another wintry day, another president came to New Hampshire with a spare offering: “Message--I care,” George Bush said seven years ago as he struggled to retain his presidency.

On Thursday, a dreary day of driving rain and cold, President Clinton revisited the state to rekindle the political friendships he made here when, during that same winter in 1992, he presented himself as the sympathetic answer to economic privation, the recession-bedeviled Bush administration and a political mood as sullen as the New England winter.

It was on the night of the primary election that Clinton told New Hampshire voters: “I’ll never forget who gave me a second chance, and I’ll be here for you until the last dog dies.”

Thursday night, he told Democratic Party contributors: “The dog is limping, but still going. If you had listened to the political experts, the dog would have died. But instead you held out a lifeline . . . you embraced our cause.

“I have never forgotten . . . the kindness and the toughness, the humanity and the determination of the people of New Hampshire who would not let our campaign and what we want to do together for America die. And I never will,” he said.

With a figurative nod to the vice president, embarked on his own campaign for the White House, Clinton, speaking words he said were “completely factual, purely historic, wholly nonpolitical,” stated: “Nobody had more to do with the decisions we made and success we enjoyed than Vice President Al Gore.”

Clinton’s fondness for the state notwithstanding, he was greeted by this banner headline in the Manchester Union Leader: “Mr. President, you’re a disgrace!”

The newspaper has been dishing out such pie-in-your-face welcomes to visiting Democrats for decades. It makes no bones about its conservative bent.

Seven years ago to the day, Clinton--pummeled for weeks by questions about how he had escaped the draft, whether he had inhaled and a woman named Gennifer Flowers--pulled himself off the political mat. He came in second in the Democratic presidential primary, behind Paul E. Tsongas, the former senator from neighboring Massachusetts. He proclaimed himself the “Comeback Kid.”

Messages Received

But the publisher of the Union Leader, Nackey Loeb, doyenne of the state’s conservatives, on Thursday offered the president her own spare message for his return aboard Air Force One: “Don’t come back, kid.”

Return to Washington, she wrote, pick up your toothbrush, drop off your resignation and go on home to Arkansas.

If Clinton took notice, he showed no sign of it.

“He’s got friends all over the state,” White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said. “He spent an enormous amount of time here in 1992, and he’s got a lot of friends.”

The president opened his day at Dover Municipal Center, speaking to about 200 local residents in a round-table discussion of health care issues.

Chin resting on his right fist, he listened as New Hampshire residents told wrenching stories about the problems they and family members had encountered obtaining affordable health care. His voice lowered, he spoke earnestly about his proposal to help Americans pay for long-term care for the elderly and disabled with a $1,000 tax credit. He acknowledged that “the number of Americans without health insurance on the job”--one of the issues on which he built his campaign seven years ago--”has increased since 1992.”

He ended the day at a fund-raising dinner featuring three buffet stops: Mexican, Greek and Carving Station. The event was expected to raise $100,000 for the state Democratic Party.

But the meat of the day was what came in between: After the 45 minutes he spent discussing the health care needs of the chronically ill, the unemployed and those with disabilities, Clinton spent nearly half an hour shaking hands, chatting up virtually anyone who had the staying power to hang around.

In Merrimack, he stopped at the Country Gourmet Restaurant for lunch with local residents, supporters from the 1992 campaign. Leaving the restaurant, he spied a clutch of children and adults. He stopped his motorcade, alighted from his limousine and, bare-headed in the drizzle, shook each hand that reached out to him.

At Manchester’s Holiday Inn, he received another parade of old acquaintances.

“A straight New Hampshire day,” Lockhart said of the excursion into the sort of policy-and-retail politics that Clinton played so masterfully seven years ago.

“A sentimental journey,” Paul Begala, Clinton’s counselor, said. “It’s good for his soul.”

But underlying the sentiment were two messages--one spun by Clinton’s advisors, the other left unstated.

The president’s aides sought to equate his political strength in 1992, in the face of questions about his character, with his post-impeachment standing now.

“There is a popular myth that he survived in New Hampshire or that he survived today because of his political talent, which is manifest. My view is that he is surviving, then and today, because of his ideas,” Begala said.

Thus, he said, the legacy of the Monica S. Lewinsky affair is that “ideas matter.”

“Even if you’re attacked, ideas will sustain you. Even if you’re perfect, bad ideas won’t save you,” Begala added.

Looking to the Future

The unstated message was that a Gore presidency, not an affair with a young intern, is the legacy the president would choose.

A poll in December found that 82% of New Hampshire Democrats approved of the job Clinton has done as president. The polling organization found that 78% had a favorable impression of Gore.

Some political veterans question the extent to which support can be transferred or endorsements heeded. But Dick Bennett, the president of American Research Group, which conducted the survey, said that any reminder Clinton offers of his administration’s accomplishments can only serve to boost Gore’s prospects.

“The same people who approve of Clinton approve of Gore,” he said. “They make the connection.”