CONCORD, NH (Jan. 7)- Change? Or experience?
Those are the choices that the presidential candidates from both parties are pitching to New Hampshire voters in the closing hours before the primaries on Tuesday.
“I think it’s time for change, but we need someone with experience to do it,” said Cheryl Park, a Hillary Clinton volunteer from Conway, Ark.
The next president, Park said, should overhaul the healthcare and educational systems and withdrawal troops from Iraq. “Things haven’t been so good for Americans. It’s at a point where we don’t need little change,” Park said. “We need a dramatic change.”
Park was among those in New Hampshire — campaign volunteers and voters alike — on Monday weighing the themes of the campaign. Some were more concerned with experience. Others raised issues the candidates have barely touched on. And others suggested the winner should combine both change and experience.
Mike McHugh, a Virginia resident attending a John McCain rally outside the capitol in Concord, also wants to see changes in the way the government spends money. “You can’t continue to print money because inflation is rising,” he said. “We have the oil crisis not because of supply and demand, but because inflation is driving up the prices.”
The widespread dissatisfaction with the Bush administration has prompted Democratic candidates to amp up the theme of “change.”
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois showed in Iowa that “change” is a winning theme. “Hillary Clinton also played up her ability to change at the debates while emphasizing her experience in Washington. “I’m offering 35 years of experience,” she said. “I stand on my record of experience.”
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards realigned himself with the “change” theme after he took second place in Iowa.
The theme is catching on with Republicans as well. This week former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney dubbed himself the “candidate of change.” Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and John McCain also jumped on the “change” bandwagon promising change in speeches given throughout New Hampshire.
Still, the themes of change versus experience remain largely between Obama and Clinton. And so far, it mostly helps Obama. A USA Today/Gallop Poll today shows Obama with a 13 percentage-point lead over Clinton in New Hampshire. Forty-one percent of voters said they are going to vote for Obama, versus 28 percent who said they are going to vote for Clinton.
Anne Miller, an independent voter in Concord, said Obama is ahead because people want change. But she describes the themes of this campaign as confusing. “I don’t think this election is necessarily about change versus experience,” she said. “It seems to be more about change versus establishment.”
The events in the country over the last decade—an erosion of civil liberties, healthcare prices on the rise, and a slimming middle class—have turned Americans off of Washington politics, said Miller. “This all started before Bush,” she said.
Thomas M. Holbrook, the Wilder Cane Professor of Government at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, attributes the themes to both what’s going on in the country and a candidate’s characteristics to determine a campaign theme.
By virtue of his race and status — the first African American as a serious contender for a major party’s nomination — Obama embodies change, said Holbrook. This makes it difficult for other Democratic candidates, many of whom have been in Washington politics for decades, to run on the change platform.
For Republicans, too much change represents a divide from the current administration.
“It’s harder for Republicans to run on this platform, but they see how successful the theme of change has been for the Democrats,” Holbrook said.
(Koren Temple, a magazine-newspaper-online journalism graduate student, is covering the New Hampshire primaries for Campaigns&Elections magazine.)
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