ASHUA - Think ''It's a Wonderful Life'' meets ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.''
It was the last real campaign day of the long-contested New Hampshire primary. There were no more debates. No new advertisements. No more town hall meetings. Snow turned many of New Hampshire's towns into picturesque backdrops worthy of a Capra film. And candidates made desperate dashes back and forth in search of the loot: last handshakes, minds that were not made up.
Not that actual voters could get close to the candidates: This was a photo-op day if ever there was one. Everywhere the candidates went, hordes of reporters went too, huge groups crowding the politicians and almost mowing down locals. Occasionally, there was sweet comeuppance as a photographer tripped over a snow bank and got left behind by the swarm. But mostly, there was chaos.
It was a profoundly disorienting day, when the mainstays of the campaign got turned upside down.
Senator John McCain held rallies in which he took no questions from the audience and trucked out just few of his well-worn jokes.
Democrat Bill Bradley, who usually looks askance at photo-op politics, upped his hokiness-quotient by happily shoveling snow for a voter - in front of the cameras. (A spokesman said it was a humanitarian gesture, not an effort to make Bradley appear robust amid concerns about his heart.)
Governor George W. Bush, who has expended a good deal of energy until now projecting an image as president-in-waiting, took the day to convince folks that he was just like them - a regular, sledding, bowling, Joe-drinking Joe.
Alan Keyes, not closely associated with revelry to date, was scheduled to host a party last night with The Drifters as entertainment. (There will be no mosh pit.)
And Gary Bauer got turned upside down, period.
Most of the people associated with the campaigns were running on little sleep, and on the certainty that it would only get worse, since most of them intend to fly straight to their next contests after the ballots are counted tonight.
When Vice President Al Gore, at the Tilt'n Diner in Tilton, N.H., was asked why he plans to fly out of New Hampshire right after the primary and do an event in New York at 3 a.m. tomorrow, he said:
''I don't want the traveling press corps to get any rest. I think that disorientation and jet lag work in my favor. Circadian dysrhythmia is the scientific name, but the phenomenon that we're going for is called circadian free fall.''
McCain, perhaps buoyed by the knowledge that the contest was pretty much out of his hands by yesterday, seemed punchier than usual. On the trip from Nashua to Keene, he joked that nobody would turn up at his first rally, as it was to be held outdoors and the snow had been coming down for some time.
When his bus stopped by the side of the road near an empty clearing, it seemed his suspicions had been confirmed. He stood up to make his speech anyway.
''Hey, my dear friends!'' he said. ''My fellow Americans! My fellow trees!''
''Oh, there are people here,'' McCain said when the bus arrived at his real location. ''They've got a new invention: Snowmen that wave.''
In a noisy atrium inside the Armory in Manchester, Bush arrived at 8:30 a.m. to the sounds of chanting protesters and the sight of two tax-cut advocates dressed as pigs.
''Wall Street gets fat, Social Security goes flat!'' they yelled.
Giant yellow Bisquick posters lined the walls. Dozens of tables sat empty. A man identifying himself as ''the most holy Reverend Moses,'' wearing a red fez and a blue bathrobe, wandered the aisles.
Bush, who later in the day would go sledding and bowling, took the stage for the main event. He flipped a pancake and caught it on his spatula, eliciting squeals of joy from the announcer as more than 100 journalists, including NBC's Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert, looked on.
The judges gave Bush a score of 9.75 out of 10.
Bauer didn't do as well.
After flipping what Bisquick brochures described as an ''orb of grain'' into the air, Bauer leaned back to try to catch it on his spatula, as Bush had done. But he lost his footing and tumbled backward off the stage, feet in the air.
Pigs showed up at an event for Steve Forbes, too, for the second day in a row. The costumed activists, representing People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, rode up to a Forbes phone bank in Manchester in a green Chevrolet convertible, waving signs that read, ''Tax Meat.''
After the porcine activists hopped and waved on the periphery of a press conference, they drove off to jeers from young Forbes volunteers, including one who lobbed a snowball into the back seat of their car.
Later, one Forbes aide archly noted the activists had been wearing leather shoes.
More unwelcome guests arrived later in the day, when a white van pulled up outside a Forbes event in Exeter. Passengers inside waved Gore 2000 signs and honked their horns as Forbes tried to speak to reporters. But the publisher didn't miss a beat.
''The Gore people honk horns, we make sense,'' Forbes said with a grin.
The piggyback effect was evident at a McCain event outside the State House in Concord, too, as Bradley supporters waved signs on the street near where McCain and reporters pulled up.
''We figured there'd be a lot of people here, some of them undecided,'' said Dr. Jeffrey Feit, a Bradley volunteer. He wasn't trying to steal voters away from McCain, he said. Just undecided ones. McCain stopped and wished them good luck on his way to the rally, winning fans among the sign-holders.
Button-man Philip Zeisman, who had traveled from Houston to sell his wares in New Hampshire, was also trying to capitalize on the McCain event, but he couldn't move his badges so well.
This was partly because campaign aides were giving buttons away for free, and Zeisman's badges, though fetching, were going for $3 each, or two for $5.
''I'm not anywhere near break-even yet,'' said Zeisman, 52. ''I'm almost too old for this.''
All in all the day passed without major mishap. There was, however, minor damage to one of Forbes's campaign buses. As two of his buses pulled along a crowded Manchester street yesterday, they scraped noisily together. A large flap of metal was found hanging from the back of one of the buses, but the bus's unflappable driver, George Turnipseed, quickly jury-rigged the part back into place. ''Nothin' we can't fix with a coat hanger,'' he said.
Except, perhaps, tonight's tally.
Globe Staff writers Anne E. Kornblut, traveling with Bush, Susan Milligan, traveling with Gore, and Bob Hohler, traveling with Bradley, contributed to this report. Abraham was traveling with McCain, and Crowley with Forbes.
