THIS SPLENDID GAME: MAINE CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS, 1940-2002, by Christian P. Potholm, Lexington Books, Lanham, Md., 2003, 243 pages, paperback, $25.95.

It’s not unusual for college and university professors to write textbooks for the courses they teach. It is rare for such a tome to travel off those institutions’ required reading lists to sit on bookstore shelves alongside mainstream nonfiction.

“This Splendid Game: Maine Campaigns and Elections, 1940-2002” by Christian P. Potholm, a Bowdoin College professor of government, is one of those exceptions.

While Potholm’s “day job” is teaching politics and government at the liberal arts college in Brunswick, he has been involved in both winning and losing campaigns in Maine for more than 30 years. He draws on that experience and the expertise of others to chronicle the evolution of the splendid game of politics over a 62-year period.

Potholm divided his text into decades beginning with the 1940s. Each chapter begins with a matrix that gives an overview of the political times, then details a seminal election held during that time frame. Reasons the winning side prevailed and the impact each race had on Maine politics are outlined at the end of every chapter.

The matrix sections, full of names, numbers and percentages, are exceedingly dry out of necessity. The meat of each chapter is in the segment that details what Potholm calls the decade’s “seminal election.” The final section outlines why the victor prevailed and the impact the election had on

Maine’s political landscape.

The longest chapter by far concentrates on the 1972 congressional race that catapulted William S. Cohen to national prominence. Potholm served as the former Bangor mayor’s campaign manager. The two were classmates and fraternity brothers as undergraduates at Bowdoin.

Every political junkie knows that Cohen walked the district to win that race, but few may remember that Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.) walked across his state two years earlier. While Potholm has been credited for the idea, it actually was suggested by one of his students, but the author saw the genius of it.

“What better way to show a ‘new’ kind of Republican, a ‘man of the people,’ than to have him show up, hot and sweaty on their [voters’] doorstep? … ,” writes Potholm of Cohen’s 600-mile walk from Gilead to Fort Kent.

Thirty years later, the details of the walk still are fascinating. The advance work needed for the endeavor was enormous. Housing, preferably in people’s homes, meals and media coverage had to be set up. Potholm and Cohen’s young campaign staff underestimated the rigors of the walk, and the candidate was hospitalized several times for blisters.

Cohen won 54.4 to 45.6 percent. He won every county except Aroostook and Androscoggin, and only lost Lewiston, a Democratic stronghold, by 20,000 votes. The walk, television and President Nixon’s landslide over George McGovern that year were factors in Cohen’s win, writes Potholm. The candidate’s youth, energy, hard work and affinity for television also contributed to his success.

The impact of the race has been long lasting. Some of the fallout of Cohen’s win includes a Republican resurgence that led to the election of Olympia Snowe, Jock McKernan and Susan Collins. The walk became a campaign staple repeated by candidates in 1986, 1988 and 2002. After his election, Cohen expanded district offices that still serve as “political outposts” and his Citizen’s Hours, town-meeting style discussions with the congressman and his staff, became the norm, concludes Potholm.

The author’s election critiques include press coverage and Potholm alternates between praise for particular reporters to condemnation for papers letting their editorial stances influence decisions about coverage. Like most campaign staffers, he complains that candidates don’t get enough or as much coverage as they did in “the old days” and that reporters too often cover races by phone, fax and e-mail rather than on the campaign trail.

On the whole, however, Potholm’s “This Splendid Game” is a splendid analysis of Maine politics in the latter half of the 20th century, but it’s strictly for those who regularly mainline politics as their drug of choice.

Seminal Elections

1948: Margaret Chase Smith vs. Adrian Scolten

1954: Edmund S. Muskie vs.

Burton M. Cross

1970: Kenneth M. Curtis vs. James S. Erwin

1972: William S. Cohen vs. Elmer Violette

1980: Maine Yankee Referendum

1994: Angus King vs. Joseph E. Brennan vs. Susan Collins