NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE / DAVID M. SHRIBMAN

Presidential race is here

By David M. Shribman, Globe Staff, June 15, 1999

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- There's no avoiding the conclusion: It's started.

Governor George W. Bush of Texas completes his campaign debut swing with a fund-raiser with Governor Cellucci today. Vice President Al Gore officially joins the presidential race tomorrow. Publisher Steve Forbes is angling for a series of monthly debates. Former Red Cross president Elizabeth H. Dole has just come out with a plan to help soybean farmers.

And in the last several days you could hardly venture into the World Pork Expo in Des Moines, an ice-cream social in Marion, Iowa, or a reunion picnic in Nottingham, N.H., without running into one of the presidential candidates. They're everywhere.

"People are starting to move, the thing is starting to get going," says Anthony Frederick of Bedford, the New Hampshire chairman of the Smaller Business Association of New England. "You can feel it happening."

Campaign cairns

The emergence of Bush from his Austin hibernation and the formal declaration of Gore's candidacy are markers in the campaign trail, cairns that indicate an important turning point in the path to the White House.

They mean that all the high-flying expectations are finally being matched by the real tests of politics. They mean that hard decisions -- about how a campaign uses its resources, about what a candidate says about the important issues -- are about to be made.

But they also mean that the tenor of American political life is about to shift.

From this week on, the country has moved unmistakably into a new phase of its public life, where politics trumps government; the calculations of the contenders are taking the spotlight away from the actions of the elected. From this week on, the presidential race is being conducted in the present tense, not the future tense. From this week on, everything about the campaign is going to be more tense.

In truth, the velocity of the campaign has been growing since late winter. In the last three months, for example, the candidates have been spending increasing amounts of time on the road, especially in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio, a Republican candidate, has spent 24 days in the two states since March 15, including 17 in New Hampshire. Former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, a Democratic candidate, has spent 20 days in the two states, including 13 in Iowa.

So far the life of the average American hasn't changed that much. "If you're a normal citizen, you're more worried about what kind of beer you're going to get on the Fourth of July or where you're going on vacation than on what's happening with the presidential candidates," says Mark L. Smith, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor. He's right, of course.

But the political atmosphere is changing. Bush's trip, his first appearance in the early primary states, nonetheless had the air of a victory lap, as befits a candidate with more endorsements and more money than his rivals.

Even so, the June offensive is only a beginning. "Iowans still want to see him up close and personal," says High Winebrenner, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines. "That hasn't happened yet."

For weeks, Bush has been speaking in broad themes, putting off the specifics for later. "There will come a time for formal speeches and 10-point plans," Bush said the other day in Iowa.

That time is coming soon. Dole is already calling for the administration to release $145 million in emergency assistance for commodity producers. The candidates might not be ready to talk specifics, but the farmers in Iowa, not unaware that soybean prices are at a 23-year low, are ready for the money right now.

In the next couple of weeks the velocity of the campaign will increase, and so will the stakes. And the mistakes.

Burger bungle

The first major error of the campaign, unnoted until now, occurred just a few days ago. Kasich, the House budget chairman, visited Joensy's Diner in Solon, Iowa, where he ordered a hamburger. Bad move. If you want a hamburger in Iowa, you go to Hamburger Inn No. 2, in Iowa City. At Joensy's you order the pork tenderloin sandwich, breaded in cracker meal and deep fried, and at $4 probably the best food bargain in the state. "We told him to have the tenderloin," says Brian Joens. "He insisted on the burger." People notice the smallest things.

The activity taking place below the surface right now is important, just as the water eddies below a frozen lake are important. Early polls showed Richard Nixon beating John F. Kennedy and George Bush beating Bill Clinton, but ordinarily the voters don't change their minds dramatically after the election year begins, no matter how hard the candidates try, no matter what they say, no matter what they eat. The early primaries count, but so do the early impressions.