Chasing the red and blue

NASHUA, N.H. – For the past five days, we've been braving the below-freezing New Hampshire weather, hot on the trail of several possible future occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

At a "house party" in Plymouth on Sunday night, we spoke with Michelle Obama '85 — the wife of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and potentially the next first lady — who hadn't heard of Bloomberg Hall but was relieved to hear that Pyne and Patton were still standing.

A few minutes later, we walked across the street and into the Lucky Dog Tavern, where former President Bill Clinton was speaking. After his speech, he answered our questions about why young voters seem less drawn to his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), than to Obama.

Less than 24 hours earlier, former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) had chosen the pizza parlor where we were eating lunch to stage a photo-op with potential voters. After learning that one of us was a Georgia boy, he said he was thrilled to meet a fellow Southerner and asked us to let him know if we came across any grits up here in New England.

In all, we attended nine rallies, meeting four presidential candidates, four potential first spouses and a former U.S. senator. We were on CNN and C-SPAN, and one of our heads made it onto the front page of The New York Times.

There were so many politicians, rallies and Princetonians in this state that we logged 20-hour days dashing up and down the southern half of New Hampshire, consuming dozens of Diet Cokes in the process.

We felt fortunate to experience American politics up close and personal. Watching the candidates campaign live drove home their similarities and differences and humanized them more than the evening news or youtube.com ever could. Nearly every candidate, Republican and Democrat alike, claimed to champion change. All tried to distance themselves from the Washington establishment.

We were impressed by the Princeton students here campaigning for their favorite candidates, who endured 4:45 a.m. wakeup calls, doors slammed in their faces during canvassing and angry hangups on the thousands of phone calls they made. We marveled at the "viz" — or visibility — campaign staffers provided for their candidate of choice by holding yard signs on street corners, and at the cacophony of honking horns and cheers they provoked.

We learned that life on the campaign trail is full of delays: Not a single event started on time. We arrived five minutes late to the Obama house party, but luckily, headliner Michelle Obama was 55 minutes later than we were.

Sometimes we learned of events by accident; we heard about the Obama house party while canvassing with Princeton students and the Clinton cafe visit while walking down the street. We found out about Bill Bradley '65's press conference publicizing his endorsement of Obama on a routine phone call to Obama headquarters 45 minutes before the event began. Immediately, we drove the 40 miles to Concord for the occasion.

With all that in mind, it's no surprise we only had two sit-down meals during our five-day stay. The rest consisted of one hand on the steering wheel and the other on a burger or container of fries. We often left the Nashua Red Roof Inn before any restaurants were open and returned after they had all closed. Our blog posts frequently kept us writing until one, two or three in the morning — leaving only a few hours for sleep.

Hard as we worked, though, there were candidates who beat us. John and Elizabeth Edwards, for example, held a series of events which lasted from 2:30 a.m. until 12:30 a.m. the next morning.

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Michael Collins '11, a volunteer for presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and a Daily Princeton staff photographer, described working in New Hampshire this week as "a mixture of school and camp." We couldn't agree more. It's an experience we will treasure for the rest of our lives.