EXETER, N.H.–Just in case Howard Dean’s last day of national prominence turns out to be today, and New Hampshire primary voters send the dangerously unhinged Vermonter back home when the polls close tonight, I drag myself out into the single-digit temperatures to a Dean rally in picturesque Exeter, N.H., Monday. One day, I figure, maybe I’ll have political-junkie grandkids and get to tell them I saw a Dean meltdown, live. That would be on par with having front-row seats in 1972 when Edmund Muskie cried tears of bitterness in front of the Manchester Union Leader–the meltdown that mercifully ended another liberal New England frontrunner’s quest for the presidency by calling into question his sanity. I regret I wasn’t alive yet to lap that up.

Approaching Assembly Hall on the Phillips Exeter Academy’s campus, I’m greeted by hordes of Dean for New Hampshire activists–very few of whom seem to be from New Hampshire.

How can I tell? Because I used to live in New Hampshire; trust me, you can just tell when someone’s not from New Hampshire. These kids are like giddy groupies bussed in for the rock concert.

It’s going to be tough to find a Granite Stater to interview, I sigh. There’s an old white-haired man from Dover, NH, standing outside the hall with his pet goat–I’m not kidding. The overweight goat wears a red jacket with Dean bumper stickers on it, and looks exquisitely bored. He probably wishes he was at the Kerry rally in Manchester, but word was the new frontrunner’s event is already overbooked with members of the press and close supporters. Me and the goat stand a better chance of seeing Dean, now that he’s on the decline and the rest of the press is chasing Kerry.

On the way in, a friendly young Dean volunteer stops me and asks me to sign in. He’s delighted to learn I’m a member of the press: “I’m a journalism major at University of Maryland, and I interned at the Washington Post!” he tells me.

“How do you like it up here in New Hampshire?” I ask.

“I’ve never been anywhere this cold. I can’t believe you guys sat up here with muskets and fought a war over taxes, of all things! I would have been outta here, headed that way!” He points somewhere, I guess in the direction of the Washington Post, where he may have acquired his apathy about tax burdens and the cost of government. Clearly the goat, the only Granite State resident I’ve met so far, understands more than the boy.

The hall is full–half imported groupies, half actual Granite Staters. You know them by their skepticism. “I’m almost decided on Dean. I’m just here to test my choice,” one pilgrimish-looking woman says to another.

“Kerry’s tempting me,” says a third woman. In twelve hours, she can go to the polls and vote, but she’s still up in the air. So she came out in Planet Mars weather conditions to sit in an overheated auditorium and listen, instead of just going online or glancing at the paper. Granite Staters are a beautiful breed. It’s a shame they’re so outnumbered by Californians and New Yorkers at this Dean rally.

Right in front of me, a bright-eyed liberal offers a bystander a Sierra Club sticker that reads, “Another NH Environmental Supporter.”

The honest bystander replies: “But I’m from….” I can’t overhear the rest.

“That’s ok; I’m from New York City,” she chirps.

Yup.

A few minutes later, another hemp-clad Deaniac approaches me, failing to notice the press badge hanging from a cord around my neck. “Would you like a sticker?” she asks politely, holding out the “Another NH Environmental Supporter” roll.

I bait her: “I don’t live in New Hampshire.”

She grins a huge grin, shrugs, and leans in to me: “Neither do I!”

–Bernadette Malone is a columnist for the (Manchester, N.H.) Union Leader and the editor of Sentinel, a new conservative imprint at Penguin Group, USA.