Manchester, New Hampshire

YESTERDAY, the final full day of campaigning in the New Hampshire primary, began–for me, anyway–at Timoleon’s, a Main Street coffee shop in Keene, about an hour and a bit west of here. The restaurant’s owner, Timoleon “Lindy” Chakalos, is a big-time Civil War buff and Lincoln admirer. Prominently displayed on the wall over the diner’s stool counter, for example, is a paper cutout of the Railsplitter’s head that’s been taped to a chalkboard on which Lindy has carefully copied out the “malice toward none” passage from the Second Inaugural, among the half-dozen greatest pieces of oratory in all recorded human history. Shortly before 10:00 a.m. yesterday, Honest Abe was looking down on a crowd of about 50 in Timoleon’s, more than half of us from the media, as retired Gen. Wesley Clark, standing on a table up front near the door, delivered . . . well, it wasn’t one of the half-dozen greatest pieces of oratory in all recorded human history, let’s put it that way. Here’s the thing in its entirety, just so’s nobody thinks I’m being unfair: