CLAREMONT, N.H. - The candidate is running an hour late, which is not unusual if you're working on New Hampshire primary time.

But since we're waiting at the Earl M. Bourdon Centre, where the age of the average resident is 85, each passing hour seems a little more, well, urgent.

But you don't have to be bored. I spend time talking with Alfred and Rosemary Hinton, who definitely keep the clock moving.

Alfred, 85, is sitting in a wheelchair, telling me war stories. He was at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, when he was knocked out of bed and onto the floor as the bombs hit. He raced to join his unit, where one of the men grabbed a rifle and eventually brought down a Japanese Zero - yes, with a rifle.

He shows me how you could do it - the plane flying low, and just as it begins its ascent . . .

"That's when you get him," Alfred says.

Alfred has the war stories, but, it turns out, it's his wife, Rosemary, sitting in a chair next to him, who drops the bombshell.

We're waiting for Barack Obama to show up. It's starting to snow outside, and it's going to get worse. It's bad enough that Obama's campaign has had to cancel the night event, which would have drawn several thousand to a high school gym in Keene. I drove the roads that night. Let's just say the weatherpeople here know what they're talking about.

It meant, though, that Obama had come all the way to New Hampshire for this - a spot of old-fashioned retail politics. Normally, Obama doesn't do this kind of venue. He doesn't do many living rooms, either, unless there are major checks involved. He does halls. Or theaters. Or gymnasiums.

There are maybe a couple of hundred people jammed into this center, which is part of a HUD-subsidized, not-for-profit housing project, where seniors live independently. Like all good New Hampshire voters, the residents know their political stuff, from both left and right, colored both red and blue (also green, at least if you count the St. Patrick's Day bunting.)

Take Rosemary Hinton, a Republican, who has good things to say about both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

"Ronnie Reagan was warm, which is why people liked him so much," she is saying. "Bill Clinton was Peck's bad boy who romped all over the White House, but the country still loved him because he was so warm. I think Obama has that, too."

She desperately wants to like Obama in the same way. I wonder if you can guess why.

"Because I don't think Hillary has a warm bone in her body," she says.

She laughs.

"I am supporting Obama," she suddenly decides, even before she sees him. "He has to win the primary. He has to."

I ask why.

"Because if he doesn't, Hillary will."

You get the point. She doesn't like Hillary. She's a Republican, after all. But I ask around, and there's anti-Hillary sentiment even among the Democrats. I hear the same things you always hear. I hear cold. I hear pushy. It's like you're listening to a PG version of talk radio.

It's no accident, then, that Obama ends up here. This is the place where Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich had their famous, almost- warm, 1995 handshake, after which they promised to get along. There's even a plaque outside.

When Obama shows up, he goes right to the subject, maybe hoping for a plaque of his own some day. The pros ridicule him for making the idea of getting along a signature issue. It's just a little too above the fray. It's just a little too reminiscent of the 2000 George W. Bush. There's a war going on, which he does discuss passionately. And there are a hundred other issues, most of which the Democrat candidates mostly agree on.

But everyone is pro-bipartisanship, at least before the election. Of course, there's also his main rival, Hillary Clinton, who has to fight every day to convince people she's not the divisive figure they think she is. You think Obama is not a politician?

And if you're going to talk about the problems of getting along, this is a place to make the point, where Bill Clinton - hint, hint - came to try to make the point before him.

"I know this is a pretty famous spot," he says. "On the way here, people were telling me how Gingrich and Clinton got together and were going to solve all kinds of problems."

He waits for the laugh.

"They didn't solve them all, let's face it. We've got a little more work to do."

Uh, yes. Clinton was nearly kicked out of office, and Gingrich had to resign. And those are now considered the halcyon days in Washington.

In the newspapers and magazines, the stories are on Obama as phenomenon. They're heavy on psychoanalysis, and they have his two books to draw from. I'm reading the first now. He can write as well as speak.

But, as a candidate, he's still learning. What you notice about him - as one smart observer pointed out to me - was what he does and what he doesn't do.

He does walk into a room, jacket, no tie, relaxed, confident, filling up the space. He's working in the round this day, and he must meet every eye in the room. The first questioner says, "You had me from your first hello." At the end, after he poses for photos and signs books, one young woman runs from the scrum telling a friend, "I got a kiss from him. I can't believe it." No one can doubt his charisma.

But what he didn't do was just as telling. He didn't seem to know his audience. You had to imagine Hillary Clinton in the room. You had to know that she would go immediately to health care, to Social Security, to the prescription drug plan. Obama needed questions to get there. He got his applause lines, but they were the same he gets in every room.

When I saw Clinton speak last week, one well-known pundit told me she'd do anything to win. He meant that as a compliment. "She's like Mike Tyson," he said. "She'll bite your ear off."

I noted, though, that Tyson lost that fight. You get the sense that Obama is still learning as he goes along. It's a long season. History suggests he's a quick learner.

Rosemary Hinton, who wanted to like him, gave him the same grade he always got at Harvard Law.

"He was just about perfect," she says.

littwinm@rockymountainnews.com

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