Was Tuesday night in Dartmouth the beginning of a Cinderella story?
Tuesday night in Hanover, NH, it was as if Hollywood had come to this bucolic New Hampshire town to shoot a movie about a debate which took place on an Ivy League campus. The fall foliage was at its peak, the media trucks and key lights strategically set to create a pure New Hampshire backdrop for the stand-up talking heads from the networks and their affiliates. In the middle of it all was what can only be described as a small open circus tent complete with raised staging, a full television lighting grid and multiple cameras. This was Bloomberg Television’s "election central," from where its pundits and prognosticators would preach the bible of political interpretation as if the candidates were speaking in Farsi.
In the middle of this menagerie, Dartmouth students threw Frisbees and wandered around to various “stake-outs” trying to discern who exactly was speaking to the camera. “That’s Chris Christie, the Governor of New Jersey,” one kid told a group of friends in TUCK school sweatshirts. On this, the balmiest of October weekends in many a year, the Bloomberg TV/ Washington Post/ WBIN-TV GOP Presidential debate “pre-game” was unfolding. AIDS activists chanted from the steps of the Dartmouth Student Center, and a guy with several iPhones mounted on a helmet wearing a white rubber raincoat and carrying two lap tops beaming instant data of some type (perhaps from the mother ship) circulated through the crowds. One woman stood behind me as I prepared to do an on-camera interview with a hand painted sign which read: KEEP YOUR POLITICS OUT OF MY UTERUS! I assured her I would. Even the Occupy Wall Street crowd made it to the circus with signs that said things like “I’m NOT the RICHEST 1%’s ATM” and one of my particular favorites; “Not Showering until Wall Street Crumbles”. Clever and effective. This guy was committed to the cause and his personal hygiene was a testament that he had been at the cause for a while now. Standing near him for just a moment I actually felt Wall Street crumbling might not be so bad if this guy would commit himself to bathing!
Sideshow aside, the real action was about to begin inside the theater, where the 7 GOP candidates (sans Buddy Roemer, Gary Johnson-who were to their disappointment excluded) were about to seat themselves around the wooden table of Charlie Rose (he of PBS fame) and take 2 hours of questions focused only on the economy. Bloomberg has cleverly positioned 2012 as “The Economy Election”, not only because of the importance of jobs and the economy to voters right now, but also because the economy, jobs, financial news are the network’s area of segmented cable expertise. I imagine if ESPN decided to cover the campaign they might label 2012 as the “Next Round Draft Pick Election.” In any event I sat high in the balcony of the adjoining media filing center. My old pal Alex Castellanos from CNN joined me along with my colleague Nate Grimes from GY&K. We were ready to “TWEET LIVE” and Tweet we did.
The debate itself can be summed up as follows: Governor Mitt Romney and some guy named Herman Cain who kept reciting the numbers 9-9-9 had most of the juice. Perry pretty much called in his debate performance and showed in a couple of cutaway shots that he either had no clue or no interest in the whole event. Senator Rick Santorum was about the feistiest I’ve seen him and he used being in New Hampshire to try to hit “The Herminator’s" 9-9-9 Tax Plan by asking the audience if they really wanted a 9% sales tax.(A slightly loaded question given the Granite State has NO sales or income tax). Michelle Bachman was solid and kept referring to herself as a former “Federal Tax Lawyer”- I believe that’s a fancy way to say she worked for the IRS. Professor Newt Gingrich, perfectly at home at Dartmouth, was his usual smart/lecturing self. And John Huntsman, the former Utah governor and Ambassador to China, was there and had more comedy material. He attempted a religious joke at the expense of Rick Perry (referencing that one creepy pastor who referred to Mormonism as a "cult"). He also joked about Cain's plan sounding like a pizza deal. Thankfully he then stopped the knockoff Jon Stewart act and started debating.
Romney won. Period. End of story. Cain was solid, funny and engaging. Everyone else should have simply stayed out on the green and joined the undergrads in Frisbee. There were no real changes here but things are still interesting: Romney is the frontrunner, but Cain is surging, Perry is sinking, Paul is holding his zany but devoted followers and will take about 15% of the vote on the day of the New Hampshire Primary. But does all this even matter right now? Romney appears to be a soft front runner. We will soon see how soft when Perry begins a much anticipated nuclear winter of negative advertising designed to take the patina off Romney pretty fast. The problem is, driving up Romney’s negative and eroding his ballot support does not necessarily drive voters to Perry. Cain must prove that he and his 9-9-9 plan are more than just a book tour. He will need to build on his plan and provide additional details and demonstrate that it will work to reform the tax code, cut taxes and balance the budget. If he does not, 9-9-9 could be the 2012 version of the Steve Forbes Flat Tax proposal, which some will recall made Forbes a short lived nerdy rock star until it fizzled under the glare of economists who tagged it as a gimmick.
And then there’s this: if not Cain or Perry (and certainly not Ron Paul), who becomes the alternative to Mitt Romney? There’s always one, and I predict there will be again. One of the supporting players will begin the slow ascent toward challenging conventional wisdom. It would be a come-from-behind Cinderella story, the kind of thing you see in those perfect Hollywood movies shot in dramatic style in the perfect setting, very much like the one I witnessed at Dartmouth College Tuesday night.
