Bird-Dogging The New Hampshire Candidates

Driving in, you could almost mistake 2011's Manchester, New Hampshire, for 1811's Manchester, England. The Merrimack River's trash-laden banks host red brick factories, just beyond which sit row after row of identical red brick houses with identical red brick chimneys. Separating this industrial zone with its industrial residencies from the rest of the town, train tracks lie parallel to the river.

But this is capitalism after globalization, and the textile jobs that Granite Staters once worked in these factories have long since gone to countries the labor and environmental protections of which are so poor America can't compete without major domestic degradation of the same. New inhabitants of the Merrimack's banks include Texas Instruments; Northeast Delta Dental Stadium; and DEKA, the tech and engineering company founded by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and the portable dialysis machine, who bought the old mill cheaply with federal urban renewal funds.

So informs my guide, unemployed tech worker Peter MacLellan, who, a career ago, owned MacLellan News Agency. Spending public cash on corporate ventures is as much a trend here in Manchester as anywhere else, the Verizon Wireless Arena having been built on city funds allocated by referendum. Says MacLellan, "That doesn't make the city money either, but at least we voted for it."

Voting is about all New Hampshire gets attention for in the other 49 states - specifically its primary, the first in the nation, which is set to take place on Tuesday. Candidates' placards line medians and lawns on this side of the railroad tracks - "Romney - Believe in America" and "Newt 2012 - Rebuilding the America We Love." These constitute an 11th-hour effort on behalf of a field of candidates who showed up to campaign in New Hampshire so much later than usual that MacLellan is moved to remark, "I don't remember a primary season this lame. Ever."

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