Vacation requires dodging hopefuls

“Is the coast clear?” we asked. “Are you sure there aren’t any presidential candidates?”
We were standing at the checkout counter of one of our favorite bookstores. We were on vacation. We were with one of our grandchildren.
And we were in New Hampshire.
It’s that last bit of information that makes all the difference.
The bookstore clerk knew why we were asking.
After all, it was just a couple of days before that Rand Paul decided to stop by the same diner. He was looking for some quaint, New Hampshire photo opportunities.
We were looking for lunch.
The diner’s been one of our favorite stops for years, and we were well aware that it often popped up as a campaign venue in advance of the New Hampshire presidential primary. But the stumping for that primary doesn’t usually begin until October or November and doesn’t really get serious until the weather is brutally cold.
This year is different, and the presidential candidates are out in force a couple of seasons early.
Jeb Bush had been in the neighborhood a few weeks earlier. Trump had popped in and out, baffling, enraging and energizing voters simultaneously.
And just that week John Kasich had held a town hall meeting in the town with our favorite diner.
It’s been said many times that New Hampshire and Iowa have a weirdly disproportionate impact on presidential politics. And that is undeniably true.
But it’s also true that — because of the long tradition of being politicked early — the voters in those states are hardened veterans of the process.
Think of it this way: When a candidate shows up in some of these towns, he’s the rookie; the audience is full of veterans.
That was certainly true for Kasich in his town hall meeting.
The first question out of the box caught him by surprise.
What’s your opinion, a wizened New Hampshire veteran voter asked, about the proposed natural gas pipeline that would run through the southern part of the state?
Kasich stumbled.
He was there, he tried to explain, to talk about national issues and international issues not local ones.
And the crafty old voter had him: Maybe next time, he suggested, you ought to spend five minutes or more listening to what’s on the minds of local voters before you start spouting off about what’s on your mind.
And the scoreboard said: New Hampshire voter 1, Kasich 0.
On to another question for the guy from Ohio.
Is it fair, a woman asked, that people pay no Social Security payroll tax on earnings above $118,500?
Another stumble.
The candidate, probably wondering where they had found the people for this town hall meeting, mumbled something about not wanting to raise taxes.
He tried to move on, but two questions later another New Hampshire voter stopped him in his tracks.
“You didn’t answer that lady’s question,” he said. “She deserves an answer.”
It wasn’t much better the second time around, but by then Kasich knew the voters were in charge.
We successfully dodged every candidate on both parties’ roster, but a few days later we wondered if they were headed our way.
Connie and I had just exited the L.L. Bean outlet store in Concord, an annual indulgence of ours, and noticed that not one but two helicopters were hovering overhead.
Our first guess was that The Donald was in the area.
But after we got back on Interstate 93, we had our answer.
There, in the northbound lane that we had traveled less than an hour before, a sinkhole had opened up. Not just any sinkhole, but one that was 12 feet by 14 feet by 20 feet deep.
As metaphors go and as sinkholes go, that’s presidential any way you look at it.