The accelerated pace of the presidential primary has made it doubly difficult for lesser known candidates. They have a small window of opportunity to make an impression in New Hampshire, rise in the polls, and start attracting donors to field a national level campaign.
For these candidates, the stump speech, delivered at small gatherings, plays a vital role.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee recently visited Exeter, the town we are following in our series, Primary Place.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Jon Greenberg takes a close look at the ingredients of Governor Huckabee's stump speech.
About 30 or 40 voters mill about in the small dining room of a restaurant in Exeter’s historic downtown. Most of them, like Jim Tanis, know just about nothing about Mike Huckabee.
TAPE I know he’s from Arkansas and he lost a lot of weight.
Tanis retired to Exeter from Connecticut a few years ago and he’s thrilled with the direct access to candidates he now enjoys. He doesn’t have much of a wait before Huckabee arrives. And pretty soon, the Arkansas governor, who did spearhead an anti-obesity campaign by dropping 100 pounds, has launched his effort to become very familiar to these voters, very fast.
He starts by saying the country and the Republican party are in crisis. It’s a statement designed to resonate with partisans who are shaken by their losses in the mid-term election. Since partisans are most likely to vote in a primary, it makes a lot sense to connect with them on that front. Huckabee then gives an essential ingredient of any stump speech, a description of his roots.
TAPE I didn't grow up a child of privilege. I grew up literally within 50 yards of a railroad track. My father didn't have a seat on the Stock Exchange. He had a seat on a fire truck. My father never graduated from high school, nor did his father or the one above him. In fact, no one upstream from me as a male had ever graduated high school in my family. They wanted me to have the chance to reach the next rung on the ladder they'd never reached. And they did everything they could so that I could get on their shoulders and get there.
There’s a lot going on here. This kind of statement speaks to the value of family and the virtue of hard work. The distinction between the stock exchange and a fire truck puts Huckabee on the side of the people who get the work done, rather than those who live off the work of others. And it also underscores his own accomplishments. If he has risen from humble roots to become governor, he must have unusual abilities – a quality you would want in a president.
But good character and talent are not enough. Voters expect substance and a good stump speech has to deliver enough to show that the candidate has done his homework. Huckabee talks about immigration – stronger borders and a faster, more orderly process of vetting immigrants -- reducing taxes and regulations on small business, and health care, which he says has got its priorities upside down.
TAPE And it's upside down because the focus has been on treating disease that we forget it would be a lot less expensive if we put a focus on preventing it. We spend so much more of our GDP than any other nation on earth, nearly 17% on health care. If we were spending 11% and that would still be more than anybody, anybody on the planet, just that difference would be 700 billion dollars a year of savings in America. When people say we need to raise taxes, no we don't. We need to live a healthier life, we need to have a healthier economy, so what we really do is we're not spending money just to treat the chronic diseases that currently eat up 80% of all health care expenditures.
Every piece of good writing has a single theme that runs from beginning to end. Huckabee’s theme is personal responsibility and it echoes from his personal history to his policy recommendations. His stump speech has touched on where he came from in his past and what he believes today in the present. What remains is to speak of the future.
Huckabee says he is an unapologetic and unabashed conservative. He began his speech talking about the crisis in the Republican party. He offers himself as the person who can solve that crisis.
TAPE I want to lead people to the place where they look at us as Republicans and they want to join us because we look like we're going somewhere, not people who look like we're sorry that we've been. And that's important. To articulate not a nightmare that America's become but the vision that we can be. That's who we are. That’s what’s made us great.
Huckabee’s stump speech might have ended on that rousing note, but he knows his standing in the polls. And like other less-well known candidates, he needs to add one thing. Some words to encourage these voters to look past the money and publicity his rivals enjoy.
TAPE If it were left up to the pundits in Washington or the Hollywood crowd. Quite frankly, if it were left up to the folks on Wall Street; if it were left up to the lobbyists on K Street, no, I'm not their choice. But I'm convinced that the reason I'll be president is because it ultimately will be left up to the people who live on Main Street who have to live with the decisions that are going to be made.
Huckabee tells these voters directly, they don’t strike him as people who get bought or are impressed with somebody’s checkbook. He says the influence of the New Hampshire primary gives them the power, as individual voters, to shape this race. It is no accident that this point is entirely consistent with his theme of personal responsibility.
A question and answer session follows and then Huckabee leaves for his next event where he will again try to close the gap between himself and voters who barely know his name. The outcomes from this visit in Exeter are mixed. Jim Tanis, who earlier only knew Huckabee as a governor who discovered physical fitness, now knows more. But what he learned inclines him to look elsewhere.
TAPE: The problem I have with him, is he has no foreign policy experience. And he said that. The presidency of the United States is such a big job, you cna't put somebody in there that has been homegrown, that doesn’t know the way the rest of the world operates.
On the other hand, Huckabee made a very favorable impression on Larry Zellner. Zellner thinks governors make good presidents and he liked what he heard about immigration and the Iraq War. He certainly will be giving Huckabee a closer look.
TAPE: I think he's headed in the right direction. I did pick up his bumper sticker. I haven't put it on my car, but I did pick it up.// Well, do you think that you might, or did you just pick it up because you like to collcet?// I saw the congressman a couple weeks ago, the gentleman from Colorado, Tancredo. I didn’t pick up his bumper sticker.
In this political season of large rallies and television ads months before the voting, the stump speech remains a useful link between voters and candidates. It is the clearest example of whether someone has the skill to communicate and connect with people who are complete strangers.
There are stump speeches that find their mark, and others that don’t. For long shot candidates, a good stump speech is an essential arrow to have in the quiver.
For NHPR News, I’m Jon Greenberg.
