Why the New Hampshire presidential primary will and must remain the nation’s first.

I am used to Iowa and New Hampshire vetting the candidates for all of us. Then South Carolina gives the south a say.
I think it works but never thought of it in the terms Dr. Lant presents below. Do you have an opinion on this? If so let me know. I’ve included New Hampshire’s state song as the song of the day
Thanks
Why the New Hampshire presidential primary will and must remain the nation’s first.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
They’re at it again.
Picking on the little guy.
Telling you you don’t deserve it… trying to take away your chief claim to fame and fortune.
But this little guy is shrewd, he’s been through all this before, and will, I predict and hope, remain the little guy we want to hold the very first presidential primary every four years.
You are the State of New Hampshire… and I, for one, though from one of the big states with a lackluster primary, support you and salute you for the supremely smart ways you use to retain your crucial #1 primary position.
Unlike the covetous folks from Florida, Michigan, even California who don’t know you. I do; New Hampshire after all is only 30 minutes away from Cambridge, Massachusetts. I know just how tenacious, inventive, clever you are…. and just how much you value and love your place in America’s political history.
You are New Hampshire… and no one is going to take your beloved presidential primary away from you, though this year as always they are trying like the dickens to do just that.
Some background
The first New Hampshire presidential primary was held in 1916. On the Republican side a slate of unpledged delegates was elected. The reigning GOP establishment ordinarily did this when there was no sitting Republican president (like Calvin Coolidge in 1924); they could use these delegates to bargain.
The first named person to win the New Hampshire primary was President Woodrow Wilson. He then went on win a second term.
The primary didn’t begin to take on its current significance until 1952. The Republicans had been out of power since 1932 and were desperate to get the White House back. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio (“Mr. Republican”), son of President William Howard Taft, was expected to net the nomination. But a group of Republicans, including twice defeated (1944, 1948) presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, were sure Taft was a loser. They wanted General Dwight David Eisenhower.
Eisenhower was what America loves, a real bona fide hero, scandal free, a household name. “I like Ike,” said the famous campaign button… and everybody else did too.
So likeable, so electable, was Ike that both the Democrats and the Republicans went after him as their preferred presidential candidate. Having simplified its ballot access rules in 1949, New Hampshire was ready to make history in 1952.
Eisenhower
However, was Eisenhower a Democrat… or a Republican? No one, maybe even the General himself, knew…. President Truman, however, offered to forego another run in favor of Eisenhower if the Democrats could get him. The Republicans also wanted him. Eisenhower chose the GOP; Truman threw his hat in again though he had spirited competition in folksy Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. New Hampshire was poised to make history… and it did.
First Kefauver beat Truman, thereby ending the President’s political career, sending him back, embittered, to Independence, Missouri and his nagging mother- in-law, who still thought he hadn’t been good enough for her dowdy daughter Bess. Then Ike pulverized Taft. New Hampshire woke up to the fact that it was Important, Very, Very Important. And they have never forgotten, making history over and over again; each time enraging other states… who don’t like the power and glory of the pip-squeak.
They say, envy and jealousy unpleasantly apparent, that New Hampshire is too small to have this honor…. its population insufficiently representative of America… its kind of personal politics outmoded in the age of mass media.
New Hampshire’s clipped, New England response? “Nuts” (The celebrated reply of U.S. General McAuliffe when asked in 1944 to surrender.) Here is their more complete response.
On the matter of retail politics being outmoded, New Hampshire says that it provides an absolutely crucial service for both candidates and America. Candidates, they rightly say, need time to perfect their message and learn how to interact with people… and run a better campaign. They learn these skills in New Hampshire and from its citizens, who, remember, tutor the candidates every four years.
Folks in New Hampshire pepper the candidates with every kind of query and remark; the better to know them, the better to educate them. Its citizens come to see and know the candidates well, weighing their merits and demerits, scrutinizing them up close and personal.
Candidates who are not known before the New Hampshire primary are able to use foot power and meagre campaign budgets to gain adherents and become effective persuaders. They couldn’t do this elsewhere, in other states; there the logistics work against this approach.
New Hampshire, advocates of other, bigger states, aver is unrepresentative of America. This criticism roils its citizens.
Have we not paid America’s taxes?
Have we not fought America’s wars?
Have the sons and, yes, the daughters, too, of our Granite State not died to maintain the nation?
Have we not helped America by conscientiously scrutinizing each and every candidate helping to select the best of what this great country offers?
Is all this not enough to keep the institution we have created, protected, built?
No, these covetous, big states say, it is not enough… and never will be. You are small and weak, New Hampshire, we shall eat you and take the presidential primary you have fashioned, with all its emoluments and perquisites, the money, the fame, the storied place in our nation’s legend.
New Hampshire’s ultimate weapon.
For just such states and circumstances, New Hampshire has on its books a purposeful law. This strict law, universally popular and supported by every Granite State citizen of whatever party, mandates that the New Hampshire primary must and shall be held at least one week before ANY other state’s presidential primary.
In this law, the mouse has well and truly roared.
This is why, about a year from today (or earlier if necessary to maintain its primacy) the good citizens of New Hampshire will trek through the snow and mud to exercise one of the chief rights of our democracy; to advance some, to rusticate others, with grave deliberation and forethought. It is New Hampshire’s pride to do so… and they will do whatever is necessary to keep it, “Live Free or Die.”
Feel free to comment on this blog and many others!?

Those magnificent men in their flying machines to fly no more…. as NASA’s shuttle program ends and an era with it.

What a great history lesson ??and encourage you to post comments about what you liked about this article.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. To get into the right frame of mind for this article, search any search engine for the music and lyrics to “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” (released 1965, music by Ron Goodwin). Prepare to be aroused as one of the great stories of our lives soars…
For most of us the space age has a quite specific commencement — October 4, 1957. That was the launch date of the world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik I. I was there. Like every single American, my concerned, curious parents herded my brother and me into the backyard of our suburban Illinois home… as we saw our sense of security destroyed by a 184.3 pound device called a Sputnik. In my mind’s eye, I remember the event with complete clarity; I seem to remember, too, that it made a beeping sound… but that may not be so.
What was so was that all the verities of the heartland ended for a generation right then and there.
“Better Red than dead,” people said. Was that our new reality? We started to look for Russkies under the bed…
Eisenhower blinked.
Sputnik spooked us at the moment of our greatest power; we thought we were the only game in town… Sputnik was a jolting wake-up call which President Eisenhower, old and full of honors, missed. A restless Senator John F. Kennedy did not. It was Kennedy who read the thoroughly aroused and anxious public mood better… and in due course made him President of the United States, an office Ike, who established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (October 1, 1958), felt Kennedy unqualified to hold. Maybe so… but Kennedy is rightly seen as the man who galvanized America’s fears and turned them into the fuel for conquering space — and giving us back our lost security.
We had to conquer space… and that meant having a space station and the means to get back and forth to them. From the moment Sputnik flew, 1440 orbits of Earth in only 3 months, the shuttle program was a given. And we put all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to work on it. The result was the launch of Explorer I (officially Satellite 1958), January 31, 1958. It was the U.S.’s first earth satellite. It was rushed to launch so fast that its tape data recorder was not modified in time to make it onto the satellite. Nonetheless, the nation breathed a sigh of relief… we were back in the game.
Project Mercury followed and the grand era of magnificent men in their flying machines….men whose names the nation knew and whose pictures could be found in every schoolroom of a grateful America… astronaut Alan Shepard (first American in space May 5, 1961)… astronaut John Glenn (first American to orbit the Earth, February 20, 1961)… and all the others… culminating in that never-to-be-forgotten day of American pride, July 20, 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the lunar landscape while Michael Collins orbited above.
These were truly the up, up and away days! We were late to the space game, but having started we approached the matter with characteristic energy, imagination and determination, a great people committed to a great goal.
The first shuttle launch, February 15, 1977.
The shuttle program was our way of saying that our connection with space was a permanent one, that we’d be going back and forth as part of our preparation for ever grander explorations. And so…
2/15/77, OV-101, Enterprise (yes, it was named after the television series), performed its first (taxi) test flight as part of the shuttle program. It never flew in space and was cannibalized for parts.
Then April 12, 1981, OV-102, Columbia, blasted into orbit, becoming the first successful space flight in the space shuttle program. (STS-1, Space Transportation System.) It returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting Earth 36 times. Columbia carried just two crew members: Apollo veteran John W. Young and rookie pilot Robert L. Crippen.
August 30, 1984, OV-103, Discovery, was first flown on mission STS-41-D, launching two communications satellites and becoming the third operational NASA orbital shuttle following Columbia and Challenger.
But tragedy lay dead ahead.
We must never forget that at the core of the shuttle program was danger. Good men and women, dedicated, our nation’s finest, always understood that death was always a possibility. That no matter how often the system was tested; no matter how many experts signed off on the matter, catastrophe was always a real possibility. They all accepted that as part of the adventure, the great game, the cost of doing business.
January 28, 1986, STS-51-L Challenger, a nation shocked, a nation mourns.
This was supposed to be another day of American triumph; instead, with the disintegration of the Challenger over the Atlantic Ocean it became a signature day of national mourning.
These 7 crew members gave their lives:
Francis (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe; the plucky teacher who meant to teach the world’s school children about space and instead taught them all about the shortness of life and the costs of commitment. That day the nation was reminded of the terrible costs that may come when frontiers are challenged. That day, too, the nation was fortunate in its president; Ronald Reagan’s decency and empathy were notable. We were all grateful for that.
975 days later, September 29, 1988, STS-26 Discovery launched with five crew members into space, always beckoning, always challenging, with so very much more to discover, study and know.
On February 1, 2003, tragedy struck again and again it was brought home to the nation that the costs of “conquering” space included periodic tragedy as it did this day when STS-107 came to an abrupt and tragic conclusion. Seven crew members died…
Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark.
And again the shuttle flew. It was the American way.
Now, however, changing budget priorities have done what no great tragedies succeeded in doing. Thus the shuttle, after just a few more flights, will end, thirty years and 133 missions later. Is this the last word on the matter? For the shuttle, probably; but for space? As long as one child looks up and wonders what there is in the great beyond, determined to find out, this story will never end…
Readers: for a thorough bibliography on the history of the space shuttle, search for “Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography ” compiled by Roger D. Launius and Aaron G. Gillette.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com. Check out Commission Maniac -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=rb14eOHk