June 02, 2007
Obama Feels the Love from New Hampshire's Famous Skeptics
By David Shribman
CONWAY, N.H. -- This is a crowd that is virtually all white. This is the least emotive state in the Union. This is a town that voted decisively for Barry Goldwater in 1964. This is where thousands of people filled the parking lot of Kennett High School in the hope of crowding in to see a black man who is running for president.
This also may be the political phenomenon of the age. Inside the high school, where a banner boasts of 15 state high school boys' skiing championships since 1979, voters of a state where natives like to tell visitors that they can't get there from here are straining -- you can almost see their eyes squinting to will this to come true -- to believe that Barack Obama can go from the gym in Conway to the White House in Washington.
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Inside the gym the candidate himself looked awfully young, sounded idealistic, appeared scrawny, seemed a familiar type to New Englanders who have been told for a generation and a half what the young, scrawny and idealistic Jack Kennedy looked like when he ventured north in 1960 to ask New Hampshire to help send him to the White House.
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This may be an unusually early primary season, but it still is early in the primary season. Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama have about the same amount of money. Former Vice President Al Gore may yet join the campaign. The war in Iraq grinds on. No sane person makes a prediction in June before an election year. But there's still room for an observation: Mr. Obama may be new to this game, and new to New Hampshire, but he's sure enjoyed a strong introduction. The hills of this state are littered with candidates who didn't even achieve that.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/obama_feels_the_love_from_new.html