2000 too soon

Speaker Newt Gingrich stopped by New Hampshire the other day — just happened to be in the neighborhood — to take a few pokes at fellow Republicans Dan Quayle and Steve Forbes, who were in New Hampshire a few weeks ago taking their pokes at Gingrich.

Lamar Alexander is out on the rubber chicken circuit. Dick Gephardt is settling into his role as the anti-administration Democrat. Al Gore is loosening up, actually learning to swing his arms when he walks.

Add it up any way you want and the answer comes out the same: the 2000 presidential race is under way. It’s the endless campaign our gloomiest and doomiest political prognosticators have long predicted.

How perfect. How better to acknowledge the growing concern about the soaring cost of campaigns and the associated influence-peddling than to start campaigning and peddling two years too soon.

OK, it’s a free country and citizens, including politicians, are free to go wherever they want to say whatever they want to whomever has nothing better to do than to listen. Alexander, after all, has all those plaid shirts and nowhere else to wear them. Forbes’s pet flat-tax needs exercise from time to time or it gets cranky. Quayle — well, how much golf can one man play?

But Gingrich, Gephardt and, to a lesser degree, Gore have a little more governing in the public’s interest to do before they start tailoring their positions for maximum appeal in an insular, homogeneous state that hardly represents the nation. In politics, New Hampshire might always be first, but it’s not always right. If it were, we’d all be worried about who President Buchanan was going to punch out next.

Even the gun-jumpers seem a bit embarrassed by their eagerness. Asked why he was in Manchester last weekend, Gingrich said there are a lot of reasons to visit New Hampshire, such as looking at moose.

Then, of course, the speaker went on to criticize Forbes and Quayle for criticizing him for compromising with the president. Next, he swore that the president could jolly well forget about any more compromising. Finally, he said his low approval rating by the public isn’t so low that it can’t be fixed.

Here, Mr. Speaker, is one way to fix it — take care of business, stop campaigning. It’s too early. Even the moose aren’t paying attention yet.