Second Those Emotions.(The Talk of the Town)(presidential candidates)

By the eve of the New Hampshire primary last week, the candidates for President, especially the ones with a realistic shot at their party's nomination, were tired--very, very tired. They had been campaigning hard for a year or more, flat out for months, nearly around the clock for weeks. The election itself, incredibly, was still ten months away. There had been no break after the Iowa caucuses. How could there be, with only four full days left until the New Hampshire voting? The schedule--the anarchic product of hundreds of uncoordinated, self-interested maneuvers by state legislatures, party committees, and campaign high commands, combining the worst features of languid lengthening and frenetic foreshortening--is insane. And brutal. What keeps the candidates going (besides a sincere desire to "give back") is the adrenaline in their veins, the addicting intensity of the experience, and the glitter of the prize.

Extreme fatigue and undiluted adrenaline make a powerful cocktail. The wonder is that none of these people have yet been carted off to the funny farm. Last week, small cracks began to appear in the facade of mastery that all candidates strive to maintain. Even Senator Barack Obama, the youngest and fittest of the bunch, was starting to show the strain. In Rochester, on Monday evening, the (then, briefly) Democratic front-runner addressed an overflow crowd packed into one of the intimate, theatre-like meeting halls that New Hampshire towns specialize in preserving. He was getting into the heart of his stump speech, surfing waves of applause. "In less than twenty-four hours, you can do what the cynics said could not be done," he orated. "We can come together, Democrats, Independents, and, yes, some Republicans, and proclaim that we are one nation, we are one people, and the time has changed for--" He stopped abruptly and mused, as if breaking the fourth wall, "That's the second time I've done this today." Then, switching immediately back into character, he picked up where he had left off: "The time for change has come!"

A somewhat more widely publicized moment of human ordinariness had occurred that morning, in Portsmouth, where Senator Hillary Clinton, attended by a scrum of cameramen and reporters, was sitting at a coffee-shop table with a group of "undecided voters," mostly middle-aged and female. One of them asked her how she manages it--how she keeps "upbeat" and "wonderful"--and added, "Who does your hair?"

"Well, luckily, on special days I do have help," Clinton said. Then her eyes welled up, and she took a deep breath.

It's not easy. It's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't want to see us fall backwards. You know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political. It's not just public. I see what's happening. We have to reverse it.

By this point her voice had softened, taking on a never-before-heard quality of slightly mournful tenderness:

Some of us just put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds. And we do it, each one of us, because we care about our country. , But some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. Some of us know what we will do on Day One and some of us haven't really thought that through enough. . . ., So, as tired as I am--and I am--and as difficult as it is to kind of keep up what I try to do on the road, like occasionally exercise and try to eat right, it's tough when the easiest food is pizza. I just believe ...