ANCHESTER, N.H. - In the end, it came down to pancakes.
After 14 months of campaigning along the back roads of New Hampshire, after six debates and more than $5 million spent on advertising in the fight to become leader of the free world, the Republican primary yesterday found a metaphor of sorts in a big bowl of batter.
Governor George W. Bush was the darling of the Bisquick Presidential Pancake Flip-off, arriving first and expertly tossing his wheel of batter into the air while the cameras rolled. Gary Bauer was the loser, falling off the stage as he tried to catch his. And Senator John McCain, determined to defy political expectations, didn't show up at all.
To the voters of New Hampshire it was another amusing moment in a campaign that began earlier than ever and was still thoroughly undecided last night. But to political observers, the pancake flip-off also provided a sort of thumbnail of the roles each Republican played right up until the end of the 2000 New Hampshire race - Bush as front-runner, McCain as outsider, everyone else somewhere just off the screen.
The top two contenders in New Hampshire did not, in the end, disagree much on matters of substance, despite claims they sometimes made that they did. Instead, the campaigns fought an image battle - over who could best restore the moral integrity of the White House, who would be more likely to beat the Democratic nominee, who could tell the more compelling narrative about his family and his past.
Both Bush and McCain emphasized the need for a tax cut, disagreeing only about its size. Both demanded a military pay raise and free trade. Both oppose abortion, but will not promise to appoint only judges who agree with them. Both wavered on whether the Confederate flag should flutter atop the South Carolina capital.
The biggest divergence from consensus came from McCain, whose call for campaign finance reform has outraged the Republican establishment and left him open to attacks from Bush, who says McCain's plan would harm the GOP.
The real differences between the candidates, it seemed, were in style and strategy. And in their resumes. And in the stake they place on the outcome here.
For Bush, the 53-year-old governor of Texas who held no elected office before 1994, a win in New Hampshire is important but not a test of whether his well-financed candidacy will survive.
Still Bush had to be disappointed by the reception he first encountered here after winning the first-place ribbon from Iowa - a solid win in that state's Jan. 24 caucuses. Bush arrived triumphantly only to find modest crowds, tempered applause, and mostly static poll numbers. As late as Sunday night, a Super Bowl party he attended in Portsmouth drew just 500 people, more than 150 of whom left before Bush began to speak.
But Bush pressed on, with characteristic good nature and vim. Having promised a consistent message, he stuck with his ''prosperity with a purpose'' stump speech, varying only the backdrop and setting. He then unveiled a new list of high-voltage endorsements before aiming his big guns: his parents, the former president George Bush and Barbara Bush, who flew in for a campaign stop on Saturday.
Never once did he seem downcast. Instead he smiled and offered sports metaphors, likening New Hampshire to the 6-mile mark in a marathon he intended to finish. Then Bush bounded out into the snow, where a single photograph could capture everything he hoped to show the voting public: his youthful spirit, his down-to-earth style, his vigor.
He avoided the glare of the critical press as much as possible. Shortening his stump speech to under 10 minutes, he instead spent hours shaking hands with voters along the rope line, giving his trademark grin and calling young children ''dude.''
Bush held up his education record in Texas. He spoke about single women and saving Social Security. But for the most part, his was a conservative campaign in a historically conservative state, focused on tax cuts and integrity, intended to appeal to Republican party members whose hopes for change were tempered and cautious.
McCain, by contrast, savors the role of the rebel.
''Wouldn't you view me as a threat?'' McCain liked to say. ''Wouldn't you be unhappy if you were part of the establishment?''
He promised to roust out special interests and he talked like an outsider - despite being a fixture on Capitol Hill since 1983, despite being a powerful Senate committee chairman.
News of his exclusion from the primary ballot in some districts in New York, which he is challenging in federal court, only cemented his image as the persecuted outsider.
To drive home the point, and none too subtly, the senator held a press conference outside the Russian Embassy in New York, where, surrounded by unruly reporters, McCain called on Governor George Pataki and Republican Party chairman William Powers to ''open up this ballot,'' and referred to those who seek his exclusion as ''apparatchiks.''
As endorsement after endorsement rolled Bush's way, McCain became scrappier, playing up his status as a rebel with a noble cause.
To a large audience at Windham Middle School on Saturday, McCain, 63, said he didn't mind that Bush had picked up so many ''celebrity endorsements.''
''The only celebrities I'm interested in are the people in this room and the voters in the state of New Hampshire,'' he said, to loud applause.
