Submitted by Alfred J. Lemire, Jan 9, 2008 15:01

New Hampshire's results have limitd value in telling people about how party people view candidates because "independents" vote in party primaries. Who are the "independents" and why are they "independent," or unenrolled? My guess: some truly cannot decide, i.e., with the Democrats on some issues, with the Republicans on others. But most likely are people with little interest in or knowledge of candidates and policies at issue. It's likely that independents--and people who have declared they are Republicans--voted for Mr. McCain because newspapers endorsed him, because he was familiar, and because Mitt Romney's ads pointed out votes that McCain took that opposed policy positions held by most Republicans. Did newspapers and TV stations present unfavorable information on McCain? Probably not. Romney tried to provide information on substantive policies that the press almost surely would not and did not provide. I wonder how many primary voters considered any McCain vote, e.g., his authorship of McCain-Feingold, which restricts political speech of people whose views on political issues newspapers either will not report on or will only report in unfriendly ways--while newspapers, of course, can report on and comment on those political positions throughout the year. That Romney did so well is remarkable, given press hostility to him and its kind attitude toward McCain. As to whether McCain is the most "pro-immigrant" candidate, who was "anti-immigrant"? Many people and candidates oppose illegal immigration, not immigration. This writer backs policies and programs that improve the economies of the nations to our south and wishes that certain national quotas were increased. But one has to recognize that some parts of the country have what amounts to an invasion. Percentage-wise, it may be no greater than the lawful immigrations in the early 20th century, but government then could check who came in and who could not enter. If someone drives while drunk and has eight robbery convictions, one can't refuse him entry if he slips through the desert into the United States. One doubts that illegal immigrants have had much impact on New Hampshire, a cold state with limited jobs, and about as far from the Rio Grande as one can get. (I didn't read anything about how N.H. fares on illegal immigration in the press.) So the vote there had little relevance to the immigration issue. As for Barack Obama, journalists have fallen in love with him, much as they did with John F. Kennedy. Virtual lovers of the man include David Broder, who wrote a column shortly before Christmas that rhapsodized on Obama's stump speech. I do not recall any journalist who took apart the platitudes and glittering generalities of Obama's 2004 Democratic Party convention speech: love at first sight, I suppose, and who tries to find fault with the object of one's passionate love? War? Anti-war? They didn't figure into the vote. On the one hand, I suspect, lots of voters wanted to support the woman. (How many women could leave their families at night in Iowa to caucus for several hours? How many women voted in Iowa? Did the evening caucus hours affect the Obama victory?) As a Catholic who supported Kennedy, this writer can understand why people might choose one of their own, especially someone whose candidacy promises to open social doors otherwise presumed to be closed to someone of one's faith, sex (gender), race, or whatever. And New Hampshire has far more women than African-Americans. The New Hampshire primary proves little, as the Iowa caucus proved iittle. One waits to find out what genuine Republicans and genuine Democrats think of their parties' candidates. One does not wait for fair and objective treatments of Barack Obama by members of the so-called mainstream press or the pretty boys and girls of the electronic news media. If fairness, truth, and objectivity broke out in those parts of the press where such qualities have become rare, why, that would be a welcome change. Ain't gonna happen.

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