Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH
Robert Greene’s twenty-fifth law says to refuse the role others hand you and build your own. New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary gives candidates the stage. In 1980 and 1992, one Republican and one Democrat used it to become someone new.
On the evening of Feb. 23, 1980, in the gymnasium of what was then Nashua Senior High School, the editor of the Nashua Telegraph asked the sound man to cut Ronald Reagan’s microphone. Reagan had walked onstage with four Republican rivals who had not been invited. The paper had planned a two-man debate between Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Reagan answered the editor, Jon Breen, by the wrong name: “I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green.” Three days later he won the New Hampshire primary, 50 percent to Bush’s 23, the Telegraph later recalled.
Twelve years later, on the night of Feb. 18, 1992, Bill Clinton lost the same primary by more than eight points. He walked out in Merrimack and told the room that New Hampshire had made him “the come-back kid.”
Robert Greene’s twenty-fifth law says to re-create yourself: refuse the role others assign you and build the image you want people to see. The New Hampshire primary is the state’s great stage for that law, and the record holds two clean tests of it, one from each party. Reagan arrived as the front-runner who had just lost Iowa and left as the candidate who would not be silenced. Clinton arrived wounded by scandal and left with a second-place finish he had already renamed. In both cases the scene did more work than the vote count.
The stage the law built
New Hampshire’s primary sits first in the nation because a state law says it has to. Each cycle the secretary of state picks a date at least a week ahead of any similar contest elsewhere. Candidates come early, stay long and meet voters in town halls, diners and living rooms. That makes the state a place where a campaign can try on a new identity in front of a small, attentive audience and find out within weeks whether it fits.
Greene’s law is about exactly that kind of moment. He argues that people who accept the character others hand them stay small, and that the ones who rise treat their public image as something to be built, often in a single dramatic scene. The primary supplies the scene. What a candidate does with it is the test.
The microphone
Reagan came to New Hampshire in 1980 needing a new role. Bush had just won Iowa and was aiming to win New Hampshire next, New Hampshire Public Radio recounted in 2015. Reagan challenged Bush to a two-man debate on Jan. 29, Time reported that March, and the Nashua Telegraph agreed to sponsor it.
Then the arrangement ran into federal law. On Feb. 18 and 19, the Dole campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing that a newspaper staging a debate for two candidates and excluding the rest was making a prohibited corporate contribution. The commission’s file on the case, Matter Under Review 1168, shows that on Feb. 20 it voted 4 to 2 to find reason to believe the Telegraph was about to violate the law, and authorized its lawyers to seek an injunction. On Feb. 21 the paper told the commission that Reagan’s representatives had agreed to advance $3,500 toward the cost. The commission voted 4 to 0 to close the file.
The legal reasoning matters to the story. The commission’s general counsel concluded that the press exemption in federal election law did not cover a news organization staging a candidate debate, and that the debate as planned looked partisan. The file was handled together with two related complaints. In plain terms, a federal agency had just told the newspaper it could not pay for the evening it had planned, and one candidate stepped in with a check. From that point the debate was, in a literal sense, Reagan’s event.
Reagan offered to split the cost with Bush, Time reported, and Bush refused, so Reagan paid all of it. That one payment changed who owned the evening. On the night of the debate Reagan invited the other candidates, over the objections of the Bush camp. Four of them, Howard Baker, Robert Dole, Philip Crane and John Anderson, came to the stage. Bush stayed seated and silent, historian Michael Birkner said in the Telegraph’s 2018 retrospective. Breen asked for Reagan’s microphone to be turned off. NHPR reported that the sound man did not do it.
Reagan’s line was eight words long. It recast him in front of a live audience and the cameras: not the front-runner who had stumbled in Iowa, but the man who was paying the bill and would not be shut off. Bush’s campaign manager, Hugh Gregg, told Time afterward that the Bush side had been “sandbagged.” Three days later Reagan won New Hampshire by more than two to one. The microphone itself now sits at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, still wearing the sticker of a Manchester sound company, NHPR reported.
The come-back kid
Clinton’s problem in 1992 was a role others were writing for him. Iowa’s caucuses that year went overwhelmingly to Tom Harkin, 77.2 percent to Tsongas’s roughly 4, according to Dartmouth’s primary history. That left New Hampshire as the first contest the rest of the field could realistically hope to win, and the first place a damaged candidate could show he was still standing. In January the Star tabloid published allegations of affairs, and Gennifer Flowers then alleged a 12-year relationship with the Arkansas governor, PBS FRONTLINE’s history of the campaign recounts. Bill and Hillary Clinton went on 60 Minutes together to answer it. Then the Wall Street Journal broke a story about how Clinton had avoided the Vietnam draft, and as the team landed in New Hampshire a reporter handed it a letter Clinton had written years earlier, thanking its recipient for “saving me from the draft.” Paul Begala, an adviser, told FRONTLINE the polls showed the campaign collapsing in a way the earlier stories had not caused.
The campaign published the letter in full rather than let others excerpt it, FRONTLINE reported, and Nightline read the whole thing on air. That was the first move in re-creation: take the material your opponents would use to define you and put it out in your own frame.
The second move came on primary night. Paul Tsongas won with 33.2 percent, according to Dartmouth College’s history of that year’s primaries. Clinton took 24.8 percent. By the ordinary scorecard he had lost. Once the exit polls came in, George Stephanopoulos told FRONTLINE, the line came together. At a celebration in Merrimack, Clinton said New Hampshire had made him “the come-back kid,” The Harvard Crimson reported. The Crimson noted his recovery from earlier polls that had him trailing Tsongas by as many as 20 points.
The name stuck. Dartmouth’s history says Clinton’s showing earned him the nickname, and the Valley News, looking back in 2020, recorded him thanking New Hampshire for it. Tsongas had his own frame that night. He called his win a triumph for economic realism and drew a line against the middle-class tax cut that Bush and his Democratic rivals were offering, the Crimson reported. It was a serious argument about policy, and it deserved the attention it got. Tsongas won the state and lost the story. Clinton did not lose another state after April 2, Dartmouth’s history notes, and Tsongas endorsed him at the convention.
What the two scenes share
Set side by side, the two nights follow the same pattern. Each candidate faced a definition written by someone else: the loser of Iowa, the man with the scandal. Each took the very material that threatened him and turned it into his own prop. Reagan took the cost dispute and made the bill his claim to the stage. Clinton took the second-place finish and made it proof of survival. And each spoke first. By the time opponents and reporters began explaining what the night meant, the candidate had already said it, in a sentence short enough to repeat.
That last step is the heart of Greene’s law. Re-creation is not a costume change. It is the act of naming yourself out loud before anyone else can, in a place where the name will travel.
A fair objection
The strongest case against reading these nights through Greene is that the image may have followed the votes, not led them. Reagan had been a front-runner before Iowa. Clinton’s second place was real support from tens of thousands of voters, built over months of town halls. A scene cannot win an election by itself, and both men had organizations, money and records that mattered more than one line on one night.
There is also the problem of the scripted moment. Stephanopoulos’s own account says the come-back line was built from the exit polls before Clinton walked onstage. Bush’s campaign and Anderson both said the Nashua evening was staged against them; Anderson walked out, Time reported, blaming Bush for what he called a travesty. A reader who values candor can fairly ask whether re-creation is just a polite word for spin.
And the law cuts both ways. Bush, the candidate who stayed seated, went on to serve as Reagan’s vice president, then won the 1988 New Hampshire primary and the presidency, the Miller Center’s history of his campaigns records. One bad night did not define him. Tsongas, who won the 1992 primary outright, could fairly say the state picked him and the press picked the story.
Each objection is fair. None of them changes what the record shows about the moment itself. In Nashua and in Merrimack, the candidate who refused the role written for him walked out with a new one, and the new one is the one history kept.
The verdict
Greene’s twenty-fifth law holds in New Hampshire, and the primary is the reason. A state law guarantees a first stage. Small rooms and close coverage mean one scene can travel. Reagan used a $3,500 bill and a microphone to turn a debate he had nearly lost control of into a story about strength. Clinton used a second-place finish to turn a story about scandal into a story about survival. Neither changed the facts in front of him. Both changed the frame around them, in public, on purpose, and fast.
The lesson reaches past presidential campaigns. Every New Hampshire candidate for selectboard, school board or the House walks into a room where others have already decided who that person is. The law says the label can be refused, but only by someone willing to stand up and name a new one before anyone else does.
The series has now run from the courtier’s door to the candidate’s stage. Part Twenty-Four showed an aide who fell when he became the story. Part Twenty-Three showed a movement that concentrated on one target. Part Twenty-Five shows the other side of the same coin: in New Hampshire, becoming the story on your own terms is how a campaign comes back to life.
Next: Law 26, on keeping your hands clean, tested against the New Hampshire record.
Fact check
| # | Claim | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dole campaign complaint Feb. 18–19, 1980; general counsel: press exemption did not cover a news organization staging a debate, and the planned debate appeared partisan; handled with MURs 1167 and 1170; FEC voted 4–2 on Feb. 20 to find reason to believe and authorize an injunction; Feb. 21 response that Reagan’s representatives would advance $3,500; FEC voted 4–0 to close the file | VERIFIED | Federal Election Commission, MUR 1168 file |
| 2 | RSA 653:9 primary-date text; source note beginning 1979, amended through 2010 | VERIFIED | gc.nh.gov, RSA 653:9 |
| 3 | Debate Saturday evening, Feb. 23, 1980, gymnasium of Nashua Senior High School; Telegraph sponsor, Breen moderator; Reagan invited the others over Bush camp objections; four of five came onstage; Bush seated and silent; Reagan won Feb. 26 primary 50 to 23 | ATTRIBUTED | Dean Shalhoup, The Telegraph, Dec. 3, 2018 |
| 4 | Reagan’s Jan. 29 challenge; FEC ruling two days before; Reagan offered to split $3,500 and Bush refused; “I am paying for this microphone”; the four candidates named; Gregg’s “sandbagged”; Anderson walked out | ATTRIBUTED | Time, “We Were Sandbagged,” March 10, 1980 |
| 5 | “Mr. Green” quote; Breen’s request to turn off the mic was not carried out; Bush had just won Iowa; microphone on display at the Reagan Library with a Manchester sound company sticker | ATTRIBUTED | New Hampshire Public Radio, Dec. 5, 2015 |
| 6 | Star allegations; Flowers alleged a 12-year affair; 60 Minutes joint appearance; Wall Street Journal draft story; letter handed to the campaign; “saving me from the draft”; Begala on the polls; letter published, read on Nightline; Stephanopoulos on the come-back line | ATTRIBUTED | PBS FRONTLINE, “The Clinton Years,” chapter 1 |
| 7 | Feb. 18, 1992 final shares: Tsongas 33.2, Clinton 24.8, Kerrey 11.4, Brown 8.2; Iowa caucuses to Harkin, 77.2 percent; nickname; no state lost after April 2; Tsongas endorsement at the convention | ATTRIBUTED | Dartmouth College, “1992: Presidential Primaries at Dartmouth College” |
| 8 | Merrimack celebration; “the come-back kid” quote; earlier polls with Clinton trailing by as many as 20 points; preliminary returns 34 and 26 percent; Tsongas on economic realism and the middle-class tax cut | ATTRIBUTED | The Harvard Crimson, Feb. 19, 1992 |
| 9 | Clinton thanked New Hampshire for making him the Comeback Kid; Tsongas won with 33 percent, Clinton almost 25 | ATTRIBUTED | John P. Gregg, Valley News, Feb. 2, 2020 |
| 10 | Bush served as Reagan’s vice president, won the 1988 New Hampshire primary and the 1988 presidency | ATTRIBUTED | Miller Center, University of Virginia, “George H. W. Bush: Campaigns and Elections” |
| 11 | Featured photograph: the cupola and upper facade of the Exeter Town Hall, Carol M. Highsmith, Oct. 18, 2017, LC-DIG-highsm-46414, no known restrictions | VERIFIED | Library of Congress catalog record 2017883162 |
| 12 | Robert Greene’s Law 25 is “Re-Create Yourself,” from The 48 Laws of Power, Viking, 1998 | VERIFIED | Published table of contents; Shortform summary |
| 13 | GSR Power Index scores for Laws 1 through 25 | EDITORIAL | Granite State Report’s own rating, not a measurement. Method stated in the chart |
Your voice
Poll. When a candidate has one big moment at a New Hampshire event, does it change your vote?
Yes, it can · Only if it shows something real · No, I go by the record · Not sure
Survey: the moment you remember. Five questions: your town; which campaign event you went to; about what year; whether something that happened there changed your mind; and what you saw. Granite State Report asks before using your name or story.
Discuss. Is a candidate who reinvents himself on a debate stage showing leadership or putting on a show? And does New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary reward the record or the moment?
Verified New Hampshire residents vote and answer at granitestatereport.com. Or write to granitestatereport@gmail.com with your town in the subject line.
Granite State Report wants to hear from people who saw New Hampshire primary moments up close, on any side. granitestatereport@gmail.com, 603-931-9264. Confidentiality on request.
Editor’s note: Commentary and analysis, not legal advice. The FEC file and RSA 653:9 were read directly. Accounts of both primary nights come from contemporary and later reporting and are attributed. The 1980 vote shares come from The Telegraph’s account and the 1992 shares from Dartmouth’s primary history; the Secretary of State’s results database could not be read for this piece. The GSR Power Index is editorial, not data.
