On Friday while driving to Maine for the long weekend, I got the same little twinge I always get when passing through New Hampshire. I can't help wondering if any presidential candidates are out and about in the first primary state, and if I know the folks they might be out and about with.

I'd heard John Edwards was going to be in the state sometime in the next few days as part of the announcement of his candidacy that began in New Orleans. I made a few phone calls from the car and learned he'd be in Portsmouth at noon, doing a town meeting at the Little Harbour Elementary School. I looked up and the sign above I-95 said 'Portsmouth 1 Mile' and I looked at my watch and it said 11:50 a.m. What choice did I have?

We swerved over and took the exit and I pulled into a Holiday Inn to ask directions to the school without mentioning why I needed them. "That's where John Edwards is gonna be, huh?" said the desk clerk. News travels fast in a place like New Hampshire. "The school's real close to here," she said, showing me on a map.

When we got there the surrounding streets were jammed with parked cars and people were streaming toward the school like it was an NFL stadium on Sunday afternoon. A few state police leaned on their patrol cars. For a Friday before New Years Day, more than a year before the primary, Edwards had drawn a crowd of about 1500. A few were turned away by the fire marshal, precisely the dynamic advance staff try to create through careful selection of venues that are almost big enough but not quite. Campaign managers have more fire marshal stories than traveling salesman have stories about farmers' daughters.

It was cold outside so Edwards came out to apologize to those who couldn't get in. He began by shouting, then waiting for his staff to find a microphone, seemingly surprised by the crowd but relaxed and confident in white shirt and blue blazer. There was confusion about whether the microphone was amplifying his remarks inside or outside the school - he tapped on it a few times with two fingers - and confusion about whether he would speak to the crowd outside first, or come back after speaking inside. No danger of being seen as too polished this early in the campaign; it was again just the right balance.

While he mentioned in passing that poverty was an important issue to him, there was no talk of the "two Americas" theme so central last time around. Instead he was explicit in emphasizing a new and different theme for this second campaign: "My message is that we can't wait for the next election to start making change. Government of course is important but we can't wait for government. We have to do it ourselves. That's what we did this past year, not waiting for the federal government to raise the minimum wage, but going into six states and getting them to do it. And now we have to do the same with universal health care."

He spoke without notes, and without formality. "I also want to make clear that I reject the idea of a troop surge for the war in Iraq. The only way to make clear to the Iraqis that we are going to leave is to start leaving." And then, in his best line of the day, he asserted that "Americans must be patriotic about more than war."

Just as Edwards finished the fire marshal relented and just about everyone outside was able to go in. The gym had been transformed into the now standard Hollywood campaign set: the candidate standing in the center with a set of bleachers behind him, packed with "average Americans" who had been arranged with above average attention to diversity; the network and cable camera crews on risers, and others from the community left to fend for themselves.

Inside Edwards repeated the same remarks he'd made outside, careful to promise that there would be time for questions, for which a candidates' willingness is an essential litmus test across this small state with its large expectation of intimacy.

It was a good day for Edwards. If nothing else his visit proved that when it comes to Democratic activists, Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama have left plenty of market share for other yet to grab. But his new theme of "take action today" begs the question of just what action one should take, as well as the larger question of whether the evolution of his message represents the evolution of his own passion or the focus groups of his pollsters.

Over the course of the marathon that presidential primaries have come to resemble, few candidates finish with the same message with which they began. Real world crises and shifting campaign dynamics have a way of intruding, forcing course corrections, new positions, new priorities. That's as it should be. The test for John Edwards and anyone else who wants to be president is whether they navigate such a journey with the grace, integrity and principle voters demand.