(Host) Commentator Philip Baruth reflects on what Vermonters really think about the New Hampshire Primary.
(Baruth) I spent a fairly large chunk of the 1970’s watching a strange television program called “Happy Days.” This program was dominated by a short, homely little man with a ducktail named Arthur Fonzerelli, a.k.a. the Fonz. The beauty of the character, though, was that no one noticed he was short and homely; everyone acted as though Fonzie was cool, and mystically sexy. When he snapped his fingers, women in poodle skirts sprinted to his table.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: I can never watch the build-up to the New Hampshire primary without thinking of Happy Days. The winner in New Hampshire usually gets a boost half-way to the White House, and the voters there know this, believe me. Candidates swoop in
and fight over the privilege of shoveling wet New Hampshire snow from clogged New Hampshire driveways. Every four years, every man, woman, and child in the Granite State becomes Arthur Fonzerelli incarnate, and the country tunes in for the same reason they watched Happy Days: it’s fun to see average people given the power to run absolutely amok.
It’s fun, that is, for everybody except the other geek, the one always standing directly to the left of the Fonz. Richie Cunningham always looked on with a pressed shirt and a Howdy-Doody smile, but there was a real sliver of envy lodged in his heart. That’s us – That’s Vermont. Just a stone’s throw across the Connecticut River from us, any moment can become a defining moment, one that speaks volumes about America. But here in Vermont, a moment is just sixty more seconds in which nobody cares what we have to say.
We tell ourselves it could be worse. This year we even have a horse in the race – a thoroughbred, actually. But the fact of the matter is that our ex-Governor is not coming to our homes and asking us if he can help spackle the laundry room or snake the shower drain – no, he’s in New Hampshire doing odd jobs for people. And it eats at us, this surreal state of affairs in which our next-door-neighbor, so like us, so seemingly insignificant in the grand electoral scheme of things, can do no wrong, in which everything New Hampshire does is somehow correct-a-mundo.
Of course, Happy Days eventually died a necessary death, and a number of states have leapfrogged their primaries to within striking distance of New Hampshire. The Granite State has demanded that all presidential candidates pledge to ignore the upstarts.
But to those of us from the 70’s, this has the feel of a desperate move, like bringing in Ciaci or Leather Tuscadero to recapture the old magic when the Fonz finally faded. It didn’t work then, and it may not work now, but I would say this to New Hampshire: Don’t worry. If the lights go down one day, and the rest of the country forgets you, Vermont will still be there, right by your side, a loyal neighbor in a pressed shirt with a Howdy-doody smile. And we give you our solemn promise not to rub it in.
Philip Baruth is a novelist living in Burlington, who teaches at the University of Vermont. His latest novel is “The X President.”