enator John McCain says he believes ''the presidency is a call to duty, and I am honored and proud to answer that call.'' Governor George W. Bush says ''America is ready for a new kind of campaign, a new style of leadership based on strength and responsibility.''
All winter, reporters and political scientists have been trying to gauge the timbre of the presidential campaign by looking at the messages voters receive on their televisions. It may be just as revealing to look at what people are receiving in their mailboxes.
For months, a Swampscott lawyer has been collecting the political junk mail that has been stuffed in his box. The pile, now several inches thick, is testimony to the relentless pursuit of campaign money - and to the largely forgotten art of positive thinking.
The man who is collecting all this mail, mostly from Republican presidential candidates, has made several contributions over the years to Democratic campaigns run by Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry and by Representative John F. Tierney of Salem. His only GOP gift: a $500 donation to Governor Paul Cellucci.
Messages and missives
No matter. He's been flooded with messages, missives, and ministries from Republican candidates and causes. (Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina sends more mail to Massachusetts than you might have guessed.) Bush has this lawyer's number, or at least his address. Two or three times a week, letters arrive from McCain, who has raised far less money than Bush but who seems to be trying far harder.
Sometimes, in fact, these McCain appeals are in cardboard envelopes, red-white-and-blue and urgent, the words ''RUSH'' and ''PRIORITY'' stamped every which way. (The sender is identified, in printing designed to look as if it were done by hand, as ''Senator John McCain.'' The recipient's name is also entered by a computer that specializes in replicating human penmanship.)
Two of the McCain letters, written six months apart, have precisely the same opening: ''Service to my country started early in my life.'' The closing to the version from last summer foreshadows McCain's reform appeal: ''We must take our government back from the power-brokers and special interests, and return it to the people and the noble cause of freedom it was created to serve.''
Our pen pal to the politicians is amassing quite a collection of certificates. One identifies him as a ''Charter member'' of McCain's Team 2000 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (''by playing a vital role in strengthening and safeguarding our nation's legacy of freedom, hope, prosperity and opportunity for all Americans'').
But Bush has been mailing like crazy, too. One early letter has a paragraph straight from the Bush stump speech: ''I'm a uniter, not a divider. I work to build consensus based on my core conservative principles of limited government, local control, strong families and personal responsibility. While some others choose to talk about what they are against, I will tell voters what I am for.''
Opponents lend a hand
The Swampscott mailbox also offers insights to conservatives' concerns this campaign season. One envelope features a none-too-flattering picture of the first lady and four ominous words in heavy block letters: PRESIDENT HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON?
''No doubt about it: the news media has clearly made a commitment to do everything it can to elect Mrs. Clinton to the Senate,'' American Conservative Union president David Keene writes in a fund-raising letter. ''The media wants her in the Senate because they know this is the first step toward her ultimate goal: to be America's first feminist president. Can you imagine President Hillary Rodham Clinton? ''
Clinton must be a proven money-raiser because the pile of letters also includes an appeal from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the New York City mayor running against her in a Senate contest outside of Massachusetts. The letter, signed ''Rudy,'' opens, ''If you don't want to see Hillary Rodham Clinton in the United States Senate, I need your immediate support. '' Deeper in the letter, after the mayor says that ''Mrs. Clinton will immediately become the champion of every ultra-left-wing cause you can imagine,'' is this paragraph: In fact, most political observers believe that Hillary Clinton is merely using this race as a stepping stone to even higher office. ''
This week the presidential campaign moves to Virginia, Washington, and North Dakota. But the real industry of politics, the business of raising money, pays no mind. It continues no matter where the contenders go. And though the candidates may seem remote, in truth they're no farther away than your television set, or your mailbox. And the message they want most to hear from you: The check is in the mail.
