ew Hampshire has less than one-half of 1 percent of the country's population, but it is Ellis Island for presidential nominees, the port of entry where you have to prove your case or risk rejection.
You don't always have to win it - Bill Clinton finished behind Paul Tsongas in '92, Walter Mondale wobbled on to the nomination after succumbing to Gary Hart in '84, Bob Dole got clocked by Pat Buchanan last time - but it has killed off more candidacies than any other state. That is why the climactic phase of John McCain's all-or-nothing strike for the Republican nomination commences Monday in New Hampshire.
For McCain, as for his corresponding challenger in the Democratic side, Bill Bradley, New Hampshire is probably the ballgame: Lose here next February and the New Hampshire victor rolls on like a checkers player with six kings against one or two lonely little checkers. It'll just be a matter of time.
This isn't complicated. Front-runners can recover from a New Hampshire uppercut; dark horses cannot. It is that belief, widespread among Granite State voters - that they exercise pivotal control over the presidency's first lap - that McCain and Bradley count on. The state is small enough, sophisticated enough, and cheap enough for an outsider to have what Aussies call ''a fair go.''
That's all any challenger can expect. If Al Gore and George W. Bush roll up their competitors here, it's hard to see any other place where primary voters will buck the odds. The campaign schedule is so front-loaded, and TV ads so expensive, that the big money candidacies have a lopsided advantage after New Hampshire.
A surprising number of New Hampshire voters - one out of three or even higher - wait till the last week or 10 days to decide on a candidate. This makes for shaky poll leads, queasy stomachs in the front-runners' camps, and volatility in the final days. It also makes for vicious last-minute television onslaughts against a candidate with momentum.
The early line on the Republican side goes something like this:
Texas Governor Bush is way out in front. Since he's raising money at the rate of $2 million a week so far this year, he's chosen not to take federal matching money, so he can spend without abiding by the campaign limits the federal law dictates. Billionaire Steve Forbes will spend lots of his own dough, freeing him of the limits also.
Forbes is the likely inheritor of the editorial support of the Manchester Union Leader, which backed Buchanan last time. So Bush can expect hostile jabs from the state's largest newspaper as well as a blistering air war from Forbes's media machine.
While no one thinks the GOP will nominate Forbes, his inherited fortune gives him Perot-like potential in the early going. The tendency in politics is for a well-funded negative advertising campaign to hit not only its target - in this case, Bush - but to rebound against its sponsor, in this case, Forbes. Who benefits: McCain or Elizabeth Dole?
Mrs. Dole survived the Iowa straw poll, which Lamar Alexander did not. Dan Quayle is on life support. McCain is like a stock car racer trying to sneak through the pack to position himself within striking distance of Bush, who has lapped the field. McCain's strategy seems to be: Roar into the corners, take the high road on the curves with gutsy stands on issues, and hope that Dole does not drift to the outside to prevent him from closing in on the streaking Bushmobile.
As soon as the first negative attack emanates from the Bush camp, the Forbes squad, or the Union Leader, we will know that McCain is gaining precious ground at the New Hampshire Presidential Raceway. Outspoken hostility from his rivals will bring more attention and free media to his issues.
Thanks to a fortituitous confluence of events, McCain's issues are hot at just the moment when the former Navy combat pilot hopes to clinch the sale in New Hampshire. McCain is the spearhead of three movements in Congress: to rein in the corrupt system of soft money and influence-peddling that siphons contributions to incumbent politicians, to take on big tobacco, and to protect the consumer against predators in the giant telecommunications outfits.
Squads of lobbyists whose paychecks flow from soft money deals, including gun lobby and antiabortion fund-raisers, are fanning out to denounce McCain. They're fighting him in New Hampshire because they're afraid his crusade is catching on. If enough Republicans and independents buy into McCain's approach, it would be the beginning of the end for the political pinball game that launders lobbyists' soft money into the fetid political system.
And that is the best reason why the 99.6 percent of Americans who do not live in New Hampshire should begin to pay attention to the Captain Dauntless of the Republican field. You want to clean up politics, then Crash McCain is your New Hampshire man. Even Democrats should write him a check.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
