NASHUA, N.H. - We live in a celebrity age. So, we get celebrity candidates. We have no one to blame but ourselves - and, of course, cable TV.

Obama is a Rock Star. Giuliani is America's Mayor. McCain is Jon Stewart's favorite ex-Maverick, who's desperately trying to reclaim his maverick inner self. (Chris Matthews is also there to help. And Letterman is on McCain's speed dial. The McCain Straight Talk Express has started up in Iowa, and it's coming to New Hampshire this weekend. I've already got my ticket.)

I went to a house party with Mike Huckabee in nearby Bedford the other night that drew 78 people. Mike Huckabee. He's the other former Arkansas governor from Hope, a Republican who went on The Daily Show and made a joke about passing gas - "I thought my wife was going to kill me," he told me - who's not a rock star yet, but he is a former pastor who plays bass guitar in a rock band and is doing Bill Maher next. Imagine what candidates you may have actually heard of are drawing.

Everything is magnified this go-round. Hillary Clinton drew 1,000 people here for a New Hampshire Democratic dinner. She drew 1,000 because that's all the place would hold.

The first rule of journalism is that nothing is new, that everything has happened before. Well, this is new. You could look it up.

It's not only that Clinton is the first woman who might actually become president. (At the dinner, she compared herself to JFK. Really. She said that before JFK, they said a Catholic couldn't win the presidency. And now, she said, people are saying the same thing about women. I kept waiting for Lloyd Bentsen to pop up and say, "I knew John Kennedy . . . "

But she isn't just a woman, of course. There's no precedent for a first lady running for president, particularly one who is the first villain on right-wing-conspiracy talk radio or one whose first gentleman would be Bill Clinton. There's no historical category that applies. Walter Shapiro, writing in Salon, likened Clinton to an "actress on an afternoon soap whom everyone has watched endure and mature." But I think that's understating the case. This is big-screen stuff. And the happy ending Clinton envisions is to be on the podium proclaiming, "You voted for me. You really voted for me."

Appealing to women was a natural at this dinner, in a state where the Democrats have just taken over the legislature, with women as both House speaker and Senate president. And when state chair Kathy Sullivan introduced Clinton, she called her "divinely attractive" - to loud cheers.

Clinton, in a rare unplugged moment, went right with it. "Divinely attractive?" she said, adding that when people question her outfit or hair, she'll say, "Well, all I know is that in New Hampshire they think I'm divinely attractive."

Clinton has star power and big money. She has big poll numbers. She has people on the ground - divinely attractive women and men - and the game is already intense.

The experts think she's the heavy favorite. I think they may be a little too impressed with money and numbers. But watch the game: Obama goes to Selma; Hillary goes, too, and brings Bill. Clinton has her speech in Nashua; Obama comes here today. Edwards was here Thursday, further staking out his position on the left, addressing American and world poverty. He may not be a celebrity - though he's famous enough - but it can't be long before Angelina Jolie is giving speeches for him.

The question is whether celebrity gets you elected president, and the answer is it doesn't. As Clinton said, it's a "looooong" process, although maybe not long enough for Clinton to figure out a way to apologize for her Iraq vote.

In any case, it's fascinating to watch her win over people. You may remember the October 2001 benefit concert for 9/11 families at Madison Square Garden, when firefighters and cops booed her. Well, most of the presidential candidates spoke to the firefighters union the other day, and Clinton, who has become a major 9/11 advocate in the Senate, got among the loudest cheers. She may be the comeback kid.

You may want to note, too, that Rudy Giuliani didn't show up that day because the firefighters can't stand America's Mayor - not since he tried, a few months after 9/11, to speed up their search for Ground Zero remains.

Still, there are at least two issues that Clinton has yet to overcome. One is that she appears to be, uh, cautious. That would be the nice word. Another would be mechanical. One writer used "stultifying." Nobody mentioned "human." In her speech, in fact, there were almost no human moments. I was sitting next to Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post, who leaned over and asked, "Where are the stories?"

We got cautious policy instead. We saw that in the latest are-gays-immoral flap. First, she ducked the question. Then her campaign ducked the question. Then, finally, she confirmed gays were moral, apologizing - sort of - if some thought she sounded "evasive." (Obama, by the way, was only a half-step quicker.)

Then there's Clinton on stage. Talking to the firefighters, she acknowledged that others "may use more colorful language." It's not the language. It's the use of the language. At Selma, she tried out her old Southern accent, and let's just say she won't be singing lead for Lynyrd Skynyrd. In her speech here, she tried for the kind of rhythm that her husband used to such effect and reminded me, instead, of Steve Martin in that scene in The Jerk, when he just couldn't get the beat.

Here's an excerpt:

"America's middle class, and working families, have become the invisible Americans . . .

"If you are a first responder, worker or volunteer from 9/11 in need of medical treatment, you are invisible to them.

"If you are a soldier returning from combat and waiting for treatment or disability pay, you are invisible."

Poor children are invisible. And single moms. And those without health insurance. And, well, you name them - if you can see them.

"For six long years," she said. "They have all been invisible."

She should have had the crowd on its feet. Instead, she walked over nearly every applause line. And yet, nearly everyone I talked to in the audience was thrilled to have put down 100 bucks to hear her. In fact, three people I talked to used that exact word.

But Clinton might have preferred the word she got from Keith Halloran, a management consultant from Rindge, N.H.

"We know everything about her," said Halloran, sporting a Hillary sticker on his jacket. "There's nothing more to dig up. Obama? He didn't pay his parking tickets . . . ? What else is there we don't know? We're not that desperate."

"Hillary has been through it all. She's tough. She a tough son of a bitch."

He paused and smiled.

"Make that daughter . . . "

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com

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