>> thank you again for being here, and we'll see you next teem. >> thank you. [applause] ♪ ♪ [inaudible conversations]

>> welcome to concord, new hampshire, on booktv. located about 70 miles north of boston, it has a population of about 42,000. settled in 1725, this capital city is home to the oldest statehouse in the country and has the largest state legislature in the nation with 400 members. it was also home to franklin pierce, the 14th president of the united states, and christa mcauliffe, the teacher who died in the 1986 space shuttle challenger disaster. with the help of our comcast cable partners, for the next hour we'll feature the area's literary community beginning with dante scala on new hampshire's role during a presidential election. >> new hampshire's role is to be the primary that is first of all the primaries mt. nomination process -- in the nomination process. and that's a spot on the calendar that we've held now for

about a century, and it's grown in importance over time as the presidential nomination process became more democratic with a small d. new hampshire and iowa work together to basically narrow the field for the rest of the country. new hampshire primary's been the first in the nation for a century, and it actually happened by accident. two accidents, fortunate ones more us. one was that new hampshire decided to hold its primary in conjunction with town meetings which occurred in the springtime. and that wasn't to be first, but it was essentially to save money, to have multiple elections on the same day. but when we started the presidential primary, we were not first. there were a couple of other states that were ahead of us. but remember at the time it wasn't the case that primaries decided who the nominee was

going to be. even though some states held primaries in the early 20th century, it wasn't the case that the candidate who won the most primaries became the nominee. that was still in the hands of party bosses. so in other words, being first didn't matter all that much. so a couple of other states decided not to do the primary when they were doing it, and so new hampshire by default moved up in line and became first. and they were first for decades, and no one thought much about it until the middle to late 20th century when there were reforms to the nomination process that made primaries much more democratic, again, with a small d democratic, and made that first-in-the-nation slot so much more important because of all the media publicity that the winner of that first primary received. so we've been first for a

century, but only important perhaps for half a century, give our take. a primary's a type of an election that's been around now for more than a century in the united states and dates back to the progressive era of american politics. and it was an attempt by reformers to take party nominations for president, for u.s. senator, any kind of party nomination for office out of the hands of party bosses who were seen to be corrupt and to put it in the hands of the people. so essentially, the primary was seen as a vehicle of reform because reformers thought that it would make politicians accountable to the ordinary, rank and file be members of their -- file members of their political parties and not elites. and so new hampshire took up the primary during that progressive era and has kept it ever since.

the amount of attention that such a small state gets is huge, and it's the envy of the other 49 states. well, 48, because iowa certainly gets its share of attention as well. but we get a huge amount of attention relative to our small size and the small number of delegates that we actually have to give out to the candidates. so, for example, in the 2016 nomination process we were seeing candidates, you know, left and right, week in, week out for more than a year prior to when the actual nomination primary was held. so to be in new hampshire during a presidential election season, if you're a political junkie, if you're a political activist, it's a wonderful place to be because you can see really any candidate that you would like. they're going to be coming to town sooner or later. the first thing they traditionally do is they go to someone's living room, okay? so they begin with a so-called house party.

so it might be a local act vis either democratic or republican -- activist either democratic or republican who holds a party in hair house, maybe their living room or perhaps their backyard if it's summertime, and the candidate comes. and what the host does is bring together as many people as she can, and typically when it's months earlier, they are part of the activist class of new hampshire voters. not so much the ordinary voters, but the activists who really breathe and eat politics and would come out to see a candidate, say, on a july night in the backyard with the mosquitoes just to get a glimpse of the up-and-coming candidate. so that's where they start, they start small. they say can we fill a living room with people who want to see this candidate. and then traditionally they build outward from that. so then they'll try to fill, say, a school auditorium with perhaps 100 or 200 people.

and what they're hoping is that by the end with, say, a week before the primary that they've got several hundred people coming to each of their events that they're holding a week before the primary with people spilling out the door. so the object is to build slowly and to peak late. new hampshire demographically is noteworthy for a couple of things. one is that it's a very white state. i mean, there are very few minorities in new hampshire. so, and second, we're not a very religious state, okay? compared to other states in the union, new hampshire voters tend to go to church less, tend to say i'm a member of a particular religion less, and we tend to be more highly educated than the nation at large. so those are a few things that stand us apart from the rest of the country. new hampshire voters have a

weakness, have an attraction to candidates whose intent is to upset the apple cart and not to perform politics as usual. we saw a good example of that in 2016 where bernie sanders on the democratic side, donald trump on the republican side very much different on a number of policy issues, but both with the same attitude of elites don't know what they're doing, send me to the white house, and i will change politics as we know it. time and again in new hampshire primary history we've seen candidates have a certain attraction to voters whether it's gene mccarthy or george mcgovern back during the vietnam war era, whether it was ronald reagan on the republican side, gary hart in the 1980s. going forward to the present day, barack obama even. we've seen examples where new

hampshire voters are attracted to these candidates who are reform-minded candidates, who aren't politics-as-usual candidates. success for a lot of candidates means absolutely everything, that a new hampshire primary could be their window to essentially competing for the rest of the nomination season. we saw that with bernie sanders. he lost in iowa but won here in new hampshire, and given the momentum and the publicity that he gained from that victory, he was able to compete with hillary clinton basically through the rest of the nomination season. he didn't win, but new hampshire gave him that momentum, that publicity that enabled him to continue. and certainly for donald trump on the republican side, he also lost iowa. but new hampshire basically set him on the right path toward the nomination. so new hampshire does a couple of things. one is it gives candidates -- if they succeed here -- enormous

amounts of free publicity, enormous amounts of media attention. and that's only become more intense as, say, cable television networks have become increasingly enamored with the nomination process and with every event every week. it's like a sporting event, the super bowl, every week. so that's one thing. and second, new hampshire gives candidates a barometer of how they're going to appeal to different segments of the national electorate. not every segment because, as i mentioned earlier, we don't have many minority voters, for example. so we're not a good judge or barometer of that. but for other types of voters, we are a good barometer. so donald trump, for example, what was striking to me when the results were coming in that evening were not only his margin of victory, but that he was appealing to a very broad cross-section of republicans. so not just working class white

voters, but just basic, ordinary republicans. one of the chief criticisms is that new hampshire is not representative of the american electorate as a whole, that we are not a true microcosm in the sense that we don't reflect the diversity racially, ethnicically of the nation as a whole. that's number one. -- ethnicically. number two is, basically, the argument is why not give someone else a chance. there are lots of other small states out there, for example, that could host a primary. why should new hampshire always get the lion's share of attention every four years. and three is that the new hampshire primary is past its prime because it's become more of a national contest, and so why give new hampshire as much exposure as it's getting when really it should be a national electorate deciding the contest.

so those are some of the chief criticisms. new hampshire sees itself as the guardian of a more personal type of politics that's been lost in the era of cable news networks and national political advertising and super pacs. we still see ourselves as a place where a candidate can rise up from being a virtual national unknown to becoming a contender for the nomination. finish -- and you can go back to, say, jimmy carter, the one-term governor of georgia, who came to new hampshire not on on paper at least an especially friendly place for a southerner, and yet he was able by virtue of his hard work to campaign, win the primary and use that to vault himself into national prominence. we can point, you know, we can

point more recently to, say, john kasich, the governor of ohio, who was basically lost in the crowd for months and months and months during the nomination process while donald trump, jeb bush, marco rubio got more attention. but john kasich basically said i'm going to make my stand in new hampshire. he did a lot of very small events. i remember seeing him just two, three months before the primary at a local social club in manchester. he was speaking to maybe a hundred people, a hundred people one evening. i looked and i said, well, okay, here he is talking to a hundred people. we'll see what he does. and a couple months later he wound up surprising everyone by finishing second place in new hampshire ahead of candidates like jeb bush who had a lot more money to spend by virtue of working hard, having a positive message that appealed to voters. now, kasich didn't win the nomination, but he did wind up contending until the end which

was more than candidates with more money, more exposure got to do. so each nowadays -- even nowadays new hampshire likes to pride itself on putting fort forth before the national public is candidate for whom we say, hey, take a look at this guy. we like him, see what you think. i think new hampshire will always try to stay first. and as long as there's a nomination process that allows the primary to stay first, as long as both political parties and all the candidates don't gang up on new hampshire, i think it will be our intent to always stay first. i think the first in the nation primary's an integral part of new hampshire's political culture which i would define as, first and foremost, participatory. an activist told me once when i was working on my book that the thing about new hampshire is that anybody can play here, and that can be candidates but also activists who can get involved

in campaigns and have a role that might be well out of proportion to their actual political experience. i mean, are there professional campaigns here? no question about it. but it's still a place where the citizen can take a part, and we take pride in that. >> booktv is in concord, new hampshire, to learn more about its literary scene. up next, we speak with author howard mansfield about his book that explains how the concept of time zones came about. >> time first meant where the sun was in the sky. noon is where the sun is exactly overhead at that time. in your field, in your town, in your place that's it. so time is very local. time is nature. time is the course of the sun across the sky, it's the course of the moon, it's the seasons. and what happens is that clocks