MANCHESTER, N.H. Only four of the eight surviving presidential candidacies count for much.
The ''I do solemnly swear ...'' survivor will be named Bush, Gore, Bradley or McCain. Steve Forbes will be no more than a factor, and he'll only factor into the outcome if he tries to take down either Governor George W. Bush of Texas or Senator John McCain of Arizona with negative TV ack-ack, and then it will probably benefit the one he does not attack.
There is a different feel on the ground now, seven weeks out from the first primary. The rumble of tank treads is in the air. The ground games of the Gore and Bush operations, spearheaded by the organization of Governor Jeanne Shaheen in the Democrat's case and the organization of Senator Judd Gregg in Bush's, are coming into play.
No one yet has a handle on how the bounce out of the Iowa caucuses the night of Feb. 24 will spin into the two Feb. 1 Granite State primaries. Nor does any pollster or pundit have a firm grasp of the biggest variable in New Hampshire: Where do the independent voters go, the ''unenrolled'' folks who number around 270,000 by recent count - more than who sign up to register in either party.
The unenrolled can walk into the polling station and vote in either primary; a voter registered as Republican or Democrat cannot. How does this setup play this year? We have in essence the ''third primary'' here, the race for the independent vote, and that appears to be between Republican McCain, the hot-as-a-pistol campaigner, and Bill Bradley, the laconic Democrat whose dark-horse candidacy flourished here as nowhere else, giving the former New Jersey senator at one point last month an 11-percent lead over Gore in the vice president's own polling of most likely Democratic voters.
Whoever wins that ''third primary'' - McCain or Bradley - affects the outcome in the other two, perhaps even determining the ultimate victor whose face will pop up on the news magazines the weekend after. So who benefits?
The better McCain does, the better it goes for Al Gore. New Hampshire's track record is that front-running Democrats - and Gore is the front-runner outside of the Northeast - do better when there is a spirited fight on the GOP side. Gary Hart's clobbering of Walter Mondale in '84 (with Shaheen piloting the Hart insurgency) was enabled by lack of a GOP contest.
The better Bush does, the more it helps Bradley. If the old basketeer doesn't win here, after being ahead, where does he win? Front-runners can stumble and recover down the primary road. But dark horses expire in the snowbanks of the White Mountains, and they don't drag out the carcass till spring.
For all of the calendar-juggling by the other states that moved up primary dates to wrest away some of New Hampshire's legendary clout on the nominating process, the net effect has been to magnify, not diminish, the significance and import of Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primary. The second primary comes in South Carolina Feb. 19, with Bush way ahead there, and then Arizona is third on Feb. 22.
''They've taken New Hampshire from a regional to a Final Four event,'' chortles Tom Rath, a college basketball fan and GOP national committeeman from New Hampshire who is with Bush.
The Bush camp has piled more chips onto the New Hampshire slot on the nomination roulette wheel for several reasons: Bush's handlers see a chance to kill off McCain, their only serious challenger, in the opening round; McCain's surge here seems to have unnerved the Bush insiders; Bush is untested in national elections, and despite all the money and endorsements, it can get lonely out there in front of the TV camera.
So the quicker they nail this down, the less chance there is for their man to implode. So far, in two TV debates, Bush has been underwhelming. More critics are commenting on his Robot Boy act, parroting scripted lines. His ''if Texas were a separate country it would have the world's 11th-largest economy'' bit should lead to a ''Saturday Night Live skit.''
The large field format on the GOP side has benefited Bush. His inadequacies as a front-line candidate are easier to conceal in a crowd. A lengthy war of attrition against a feisty guy like McCain, who seems energized by the fray, might expose more cracks in the Bush facade. McCain just released his medical records, showing his IQ measured at 128 and 133 in two tests. Does anyone think Bush will do the same? Nope.
Bush's perfunctory debate skills may not derail his awesomely financed candidacy. But each time they're on the same show, Bush suffers by comparison. All he seems to know is Texas. By contrast, the hottest commodity is McCain, with his flat-out populist approach. The Arizonan's latest TV spot, vowing to blow up the congressional pork barrel, plays well with New Hampshire's quirky independents.
New Hampshire can shut the door on this campaign in both parties if Bush and Gore win big. But if New Hampshire's maverick independents find McCain to their taste, he lives to fight another day.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
