Whether it was the now-famous tear in her eye that helped Clinton change minds in the final hours will be long debated. Chances are the tear was just an easily identified symbol for something larger that had finally changed in the Clinton campaign's approach. For just a few moments, she stopped trying to impress us. All she wanted now, at long last, was a little bit of understanding.
A year ago, a crystal ball gazer might have announced that Hillary Clinton and John McCain would win the 2008 New Hampshire primary. At the time, of course, that prediction would have been greeted with yawns.
That's because at the outset of this long presidential steeplechase, Clinton and McCain were the favorites in the eyes of many politicians, political professionals and newspeople.
But on the way to this week's New Hampshire results, both McCain and Clinton underwent something quite near a campaign collapse. For the Republican senator from Arizona, it came early; for the Democratic senator from New York, in came in the final weeks of the year and first weeks of 2008.
Back in the spring, McCain's financial statements became the most-read documents of the new campaign year. His large and costly team was spending money faster than it was coming in. Meanwhile, McCain was taking unpopular stands in favor of U.S. military commitment in Iraq and in favor of guest worker programs and an earned path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The first policy cost him among independents and potential Democratic crossovers. The second was anathema to many Republicans.
Before long, McCain had tumbled from the top of the GOP list, giving way to Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson and even Mitt Romney. By the late autumn, Mike Huckabee was looking like a more likely Republican standard-bearer than the man whose campaign came close to knocking off George W. Bush in 2000.
But as the campaign wore on, some of the other candidates' appeal began to wear out. Giuliani stumbled when his longtime associate Bernard Kerik was indicted in New York. Romney battled in vain to change the subject from his Mormonism. Thompson never seemed to decide to get serious about running.
Gradually, week by week, McCain began to re-emerge as a guy people could listen to and nod and mean it. He got some of his roguish humor back, not to mention his square-jawed defiance of conventional political courtesy. Support for the Iraq war also grew back somewhat, with better news from some of the battlefronts, and the immigration issue receded once the bill McCain backed failed to become law.
McCain's comeback was difficult, but he did have months to bring it about. By contrast, the comeback by Clinton had to be engineered in a matter of hours. After finishing third in Iowa, the Clinton campaign persona could not stand another big crack in its illusion of invincibility. Yet even before the Iowa caucus numbers came in, polls in New Hampshire were detecting softness in her support. Most foreboding.
This was borne out when a mild stumble over a question about drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants seemed to have her flummoxed at the end of October. Other incidents followed in which the slightest hesitation or faux pas on her part fueled several days of news coverage.
The polls, long friendly to Clinton, began to weaken and then turn against her — including in New Hampshire.
After the Iowa debacle, Clinton found the wind in her face in the Granite State as well. Polls showed her falling behind Obama by double digits. It was all happening so fast, it seemed unbelievable. And so, it turns out, it should have been.
Yes, Obama spoke to independents and Democrats and won them over in big numbers, but many of the resulting conversions were not permanent — especially among women.
Whether it was the now-famous tear in her eye that helped Clinton change minds in the final hours will be long debated. Chances are the tear was just an easily identified symbol for something larger that changed in the Clinton campaign's approach. For just a few moments, she stopped trying to impress us. All she wanted now, at long last, was a little bit of understanding.
An act? Perhaps. But it was a sign that meant something to the undecided. It meant enough for roughly one in 10 prospective Obama voters to peel off and vote for Clinton instead. This brought the reversal of fortune that left so many observers with more to explain and less to say in explanation than at any moment since George H.W. Bush won this primary over Republican rival Bob Dole in 1988.
The difference is that Dole was never so far ahead of Bush in the polls as Obama was ahead of Clinton. The 2008 reversal is by far the greater conundrum.
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