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Every New Hampshire presidential election campaign has its minor but telling moments that have a disproportionate impact on the race. The tears or melting snow that ran down Democratic presidential candidate Ed Muskie's face in Manchester in 1972. Ronald Reagan's "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green," in Nashua in 1980. That day in Berlin in 1984 when Sen. Gary Hart, on his second try in an ax-throwing competition, nailed a bull's-eye for the cameras and went on to win the Democratic primary.
The 2008 presidential campaign, which began, it seems, in 1998 when John McCain started dropping in on New Hampshire, had its moments. In no particular order, here are a few of them, starting with that day in September 2007 when, at an assembly, a Concord High School student said this to McCain:
"If elected, you'd be older than Ronald Reagan, making you the oldest president. Do you ever worry you might die in office or get Alzheimer's or some other disease that might affect your judgment?"
"Thanks for the question, you little jerk," McCain replied. "You're drafted."
The kid's question, while not exactly tactfully put, was legitimate. The outburst by the boor who kept yelling "Iron my shirt!" at a Hillary Clinton campaign event at Salem High School was not.
And speaking of boorish moments, the cameras were also rolling a few days later in Nashua when Bill O'Reilly of Fox News swore and screamed "Move!" into the face of a 6-foot-8 Obama staffer who was inadvertently blocking the talk show host's ability to get Barack Obama's attention. O'Reilly crossed a rope barricade, grabbed the staffer with both hands and tried to shove him out of the way. The Secret Service escorted the pugnacious pontificator behind the ropes.
Some say had it not been for one impromptu moment, Clinton would have lost the primary to Obama. That moment came in a Portsmouth café, when 64-year-old Marianne Pernold Young, a freelance photographer, sympathetically asked a clearly weary Clinton, "How do you do it? How do you keep upbeat and wonderful?"
With her voice cracking and tears in her eyes, Clinton gave a long reply that included, "You know, some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds, and we do it, each one of us because we care about our country." Young later voted for Obama.
Some candidates' statements give ammunition to the opponent. At a town hall meeting in Derry on Jan. 3, McCain was glib in responding to a question about how many years American troops would remain in Iraq. "Maybe a hundred. That would be fine with me," he said. McCain has been explaining what he meant ever since.
Bill Clinton, who was clearly unsettled by Obama's defeat of his wife in Iowa, made enough ill-considered comments about her opponent that he was sent to time-out by Hillary's campaign. One of them was made in Hanover, when the former president said Obama's repeated claims of prescience for his early opposition to the war in Iraq was "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."
Bill Clinton wasn't the only member of Hillary Clinton's team sent to time-out. Bill Shaheen, husband of former governor Jeanne Shaheen and a national and state co-chair of Clinton's campaign, was put there permanently. Shaheen's blunder? He gave voice to a scurrilous buzz campaign fueled by Obama's admission in an autobiography published 12 years earlier that he had experimented with drugs as a teenager. Republicans would attack Obama if he's the nominee by asking if he ever gave or sold drugs to anyone or still used them, Shaheen warned publicly. The clumsy attempt to boost Hillary's chances backfired, and the campaign muzzled Shaheen.
Finally, in perhaps a sign that a Rudy Giuliani presidency was not to be, precisely as the former New York City mayor was explaining his pro-choice position on abortion at a Republican debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester lightning struck, knocking out his microphone.
"For someone who went to parochial school, this is a very frightening thing that's happening right now," Giuliani said.