Adele M. Stan: New Hampshire Primary Designed for National Media!

For all the talk about the glories of retail politics in the Granite State's first-in-the nation primary, you'd think the spectacle now gripping New Hampshire and the GOP presidential hopefuls have at each other was all about winning the votes of New Hampshirites. Don't believe a word of it. The New Hampshire primary, as it exists today, is an elaborate reality show designed for national, not local, media. New Hampshire is just the stage set, one its officials are eager to provide, both for the business it brings to the state, as hordes of reporters fill up hotels and restaurants, and for the importance it confers on local political brokers, who would otherwise be mere petty chieftains of a small, if beautiful, idiosyncratic state. Media create the storyline, choosing which timeworn nuggets to play up, which manufactured controversies to amplify, and which extras get selected to play the role of the typical New Hampshire voter. The candidates know this, of course, and do their best to manipulate the media. Often, the voters are lost in the shuffle, which tents to piss them off, a lesson Rep. Ron Paul learned the hard way. Of the three campaign events I've attended in the last 24 hours, only one, a town-hall meeting conducted by former US Senator Rick Santorum in Salem, actually drew more voters than media.