n 1984 in a Houston beer garden, Texas wiseacre Jim Hightower gave one of the best introductions to one of the unluckiest presidential candidates of all time. ''Here he is,'' thundered Jim. ''He's hotter than high school love!''
Saying your guy is hot and having your guy cooking at a high temp are two very different items. But getting hot at the right time is every candidate's fantasy - just as chilling at the wrong juncture can send your crusade into the deep freeze. Which brings us to the fate of Senator John McCain. By any measure, the Arizona Republican is the hottest commodity on the campaign trail, coming farthest from farthest back.
Of the dozen Republicans who began, he's chin-to-chin against Texan George W. Bush in New Hampshire, just 18 days out. But Iowa Republicans caucus in 10 days, and McCain's hottest hopes for New Hampshire risk clipping an Iowa iceberg.
Iowa is tough territory for McCain. He has opposed ethanol subsidies, the gift of tax dollars to Iowa corn growers to make fuel. Because that's one of the pork outrages McCain targets, it's all uphill for McCain in Iowa's 99 counties. It is conceivable that the feisty Arizonan, who has not campaigned hard there, could run fourth when the Monday night caucus attendees choose up sides, behind Bush, Steve Forbes, and maybe even Gary Bauer.
Bush is the lopsided front-runner everywhere but New Hampshire. Forbes, who spent $300 a head to finish second in last summer's Ames, Iowa, straw poll, can buy his way into a distant second. Bauer has the God Squad going for him, the antiabortion zealots of Iowa's robust Christian Right, whose small but cohesive numbers are exaggerated in the easily manipulable caucus format.
So where does that leave McCain with New Hampshire voting eight days later? Possibly up the creek if the same thing happens to him as happened to another military hero, former Ohio senator John Glenn in 1984.
That year, Walter Mondale won Iowa going away, but Glenn fared poorly out there. Gary Hart, who finished a distant second to Mondale with barely 15 percent of the caucus votes, roared into New Hampshire and clobbered Mondale eight days later.
Half of Glenn's New Hampshire support bled off to Hart, who overnight had become the stop-Mondale candidate. New Hampshire is fluid, and Granite State voters are shrewd and sophisticated about sending the message they most want sent. Eight years ago their message was that President Bush was in trouble and the centrist dogma of Paul Tsongas and Bill Clinton was OK by them, just fix the economy, stupid.
Four years ago it was Pat Buchanan's turn to ride the wave. This year, I suspect, the message might have something to do with corruption and chicanery and character, or perceived lack thereof, in D.C.
So who's the messenger New Hampshire will select? I've argued here that the messenger will be McCain or Bill Bradley, the two campaign finance critics who have prospered by being critical of business as usual. And you've heard me suggest that it is the independent bloc of unenrolled voters who can vote in either primary who will tilt the outcome in both party races. If McCain outduels Bradley for the lion's share of the independents, McCain might outlast Bush in New Hampshire. But if Bradley cops the independent vote over McCain, that could enable Dollar Bill to nose out Vice President Al Gore.
There's a synergy to campaigns, just as there is to business mergers or high school love; what happens elsewhere affects the relationship. And if Bradley runs a close or even respectable second to Gore in Iowa's caucuses while at the same time McCain runs a poor third or a lousy fourth, New Hampshire voters have a week to make their choice:
Who's the better messenger on campaign finance reform and business as usual? McCain or Bradley? Because one of those two aspires to become the Gary Hart of 2000. For my money, the gutsy McCain has more of a claim to being the real deal than Bradley, who was a backbencher in the Senate who virtually disappeared in the last of his three six-year terms.
Whatever else you may think of Jarrin' Jawn, he's no MIA. Neither Bradley nor McCain has much of a shot at actually getting nominated because Gore and Bush are way ahead elsewhere. Both tried to in oculate their candidacies in New Hampshire. How? Bush has run the same ad every day for three weeks, casting himself as a tax-cutter, to preempt the air assault of Steve Forbes's ads calling Bush a tax pledge-breaker, like his old man. And Gore roped in the endorsement of Ted Kennedy, the Senate's heavyweight champ on health care, to blunt Bradley's my-big-idea-is-health-insurance-for-all.
In oculation is a safety belt, as all who skipped their flu shots realize. Clinton in oculated himself against media viruses in New Hampshire eight years ago, surviving the Gennifer Flowers flu.
Gore this time has had generally the worst press of any candidate, and if he survives New Hampshire, he will be in oculated to some extent. But as Bush Sr., Bob Dole, and Walter Mondale learned to their rue, there's no in oculation against the Iowa flu.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
