Live Free or Die


New Hampshire Proved Why It Should Be First in the Nation



During my semi-retirement, I was hired as a consultant for a major publishing company based in Philadelphia. My task was to win over new clients to advertise in the company's many trade books.



Largely, my assignment required me to spend a good deal of time in Northern New England.



At times, I would drive because there were few airports outside of Logan that could get me where I wanted to go. At the time, I was living in the mountainous area in Western New York State... and it was easy for me to drive down my mountain and be in Vermont in about an hour and a half.



I knew the territory.

Before, I had lived in Boston before working for a computer company which took me from MIT down to New Bedford.



I loved the area—especially in the Fall—and so it was a perfect territory for me along with the other 26 states I handled.



Mostly, I would go into either Keene, Nashua or Lebanon which is in northwest New Hampshire.



What I discovered proved to be quite true. The motto “Live Free or Die” seemed very appropriate although each part of the State seemed to have different loyalties and different points of view.



Keene for example seemed to be an iconoclastic little town set off north of some of the old Massachusetts mill towns, pretty much not near anything so it was kind of a laboratory for doing things a little differently; Nashua was a manufacturing center that seemed to have its fortunes more tied to the progressiveness of Boston; and tiny Lebanon seemed to be a college town posited up in the sparsely settled northwestern part of the State that perhaps was more Libertarian and independent than some of the more urbanized areas in the south….



So when I sat glued to the TV last night, I wondered how all of these independent minded folk would behave and I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had retained their sense of independence by bucking the Iowan tour de force and backing their own candidates overwhelming.



Clearly, many had doubts about what Romney was all about. And Huckabee did not have the core of fundamentalists to cling to. This election was clearly about other things.

It was about change. There was no doubt about that. The election of McCain showed that they didn’t want a lackey in the White House and it was less about the war or catering to the fears propagated by the White House and more about the economy and changing the mind-set of our leaders from its self imposed isolation and hard-nosed policy making.



The people of New Hampshire not surprisingly made a statement.



They wanted peace; they wanted a good economy. They wanted health care and good jobs. They wanted to keep their roofs over their heads and they wanted good education for their children. It boiled down to that and perhaps a strong undercurrent was finding candidates we could believe in once again.



All in all, the New Hampshire citizens gave us a very good example why they should be the first Primary in the State.



And they made us all proud.



Les Aaron

Committee for Positive Change