New Hampshire's 15 minutes of fame
The funny thing about the famous New Hampshire primary, taking place on 27th January, is that it is so easy to fix. Registered Republicans (36.5 per cent of registered voters) and Democrats (26 per cent) must vote in their own party's primary. But voters registered as independent (37.5 per cent) can choose to vote in either primary - which accounts for the steady rise in the number of independents as smart voters try to intervene where it counts most. Four years ago, 155,500 independents turned out to vote in the 2000 primary, compared to 140,550 Republicans and 92,800 Democrats. That year's battle between George W Bush and John McCain saw three out of five indies choosing to vote in the Republican primary. This year, with no Republican challenge, the indies will be decisive for the Democrats. Loyal Republicans can switch their allegiance to "independent" in order to vote for Howard Dean, the man the White House thinks it will be easiest to beat. Democrats speculate darkly that the White House's Karl Rove has been quietly urging Republicans to take this indie route. Maybe. But Bush family lore holds that Papa only lost the 1992 election because so many indies voted for his right-wing opponent Pat Buchanan in the New Hampshire primary, making Bush look like a loser.
Dean and the deep south
The man behind Howard Dean's campaign, Joe Trippi (who worked for Dick Gephardt in the 1988 campaign) has always reckoned that the secret to this year's foreshortened primary season is that the long stranglehold of the south has been broken. There is no longer a "Super Tuesday" big primary when the bulk of the southern states all vote at once, giving them a decisive early say. For Trippi, this is what makes it possible for a New England Yankee like Dean to go all the way. As a result, Dean has spent little time in the one southern state that comes early, South Carolina (3rd February) where blacks constitute 40 per cent of the primary vote. But he has wheeled out his black supporters, like Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee. Trippi has also now lured Andi Pringle, hitherto manager of Carol Moseley Braun's campaign, to be Dean's new deputy chief of staff. Dean has also snapped up Big Jim Sanderson, celebrated head of the local steelworkers' union, even though the national union has endorsed Gephardt.
More tax cuts for the rich
Republicans who claim to be in the know are hugely bullish about Wall Street, even though the Dow Jones is back over 10,000. (It was just over 6,000 when Alan Greenspan delivered his famous warning about "irrational exuberance.") They claim that new wheezes to expand savings accounts and to begin privatising social security are already being prepared for the Bush second term. This year's budget will already include a scheme for tax-sheltered lifetime and retirement savings accounts. After-tax earnings once deposited will never be taxed again. "That means a zero tax rate for capital gains and dividends," confided Tumbler's White House source as he poured more champagne. He sees the Dow hitting 15,000 with a Bush re-election victory.
Rough justice for Monica
There may be rough justice in the stern decision of the US court of appeals to deny Monica Lewinsky (remember her?) government funds to defray the $1.16m in legal fees she incurred during the judicial investigation of her affair with Bill Clinton. Led by David B Sentelle, the three-man panel ruled that Monica was not entitled to any funds since she could - and probably would - have been charged with perjury had she not got an immunity deal from independent counsel Kenneth Starr. The rough justice lies not in the fact that Sentelle (a Reagan appointee) was a member of the original panel of highly conservative judges that appointed Starr in the first place. It lies in the fact that the same court of appeals panel ruled on a quiet July day when media attention was elsewhere that Bill and Hillary were also not entitled to a full government refund for their $3.58m legal fees in dealing with that other inquiry by independent counsel Robert Fiske into their famous Whitewater land deal.
Dean gets Christianity
It's not just the Democratic establishment that dislikes Dean. The Washington media feel the frontrunner doesn't pay them enough respect. "Reporters who have spent hours with Dean say that he never asks a single question about them," explains the Washington Post's media reporter Howard Kurtz. But while sceptical of the supposed power of the press, Tumbler was struck by Dean's sensitivity to some media. The day after the New Republic ran a cover story on Dean being weakened by his outspoken secularism, he gave an interview to the Boston Globe to assert that he is "a committed believer in Jesus Christ." A Congregationalist whose wife and children are Jewish, Dean recruited Jesus to his campaign. "Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind. He fought against the self-righteousness of people who had everything." Then he flew off to an African-American church in South Carolina to deliver a sermon that went: "In this house of the Lord, we know that the power rests in God's hands and in Jesus's hands for helping us. But the power also is on this, God's earth."
