This was the question as the posted start time for the Hanover stop of John McCain's "the Mac is back" tour approached: Would McCain circa T Minus 1 outdraw Biden circa T Minus 9 Months?
McCain would be appearing in the Dartmouth College room Biden spoke in last spring, but his staff had used curtains to block off maybe one third of the room for McCain and his audience, and were frantically urging attendees to move toward the small stage that had been set up. In the end, McCain did outdraw Biden somewhat, and one of the curtains was removed. But en route to that moment, the McCain campaign revealed the stagecraft of campaign events more blatantly than I have ever seen, revealing in the process that they wanted the crowd to be uncomfortable if it would look good for the cameras. So people were forced to stand in a room that could have accommodated them in chairs, and harangued to crowd together long before the candidate arrived, and forced to listen to some of the same godawful songs more than once due to McCain's lateness. One man even took a break from urging people toward the stage and tried to lead them in call-and-response cheers. ("Who do we want for straight talk? McCain!" etc - he gave up pretty quickly.)
Despite the view of the McCain supporters standing next to me that, being a military man, he would surely be on time, McCain, wife Cindy, and the governor of Vermont were nearly 40 minutes later than his planned arrival time (as opposed to the posted start time, 15 minutes before that). Delivery of the line "without a doubt, Mac is back" fell to Governor Douglas, who then had to encourage the crowd to applaud policy items such as middle-class tax relief but found applause came easier for the hoary old "straight talker" line. Cindy McCain did the feminized relational work of apologizing for their lateness, and then McCain took the microphone. For like fifteen minutes.
McCain's brief stump speech opened with a few lame jokes before hitting three issues. Climate change came first: McCain walks the tightrope on that touchy-for-Republicans issue by saying that while he is convinced by the science that says climate change is real and human-caused, people who do not believe that should consider that the result of wrongly believing in climate change is leaving a cleaner planet for our children while the result of wrongly dismissing it is damaging their future. He goes on to push nuclear power as a clean alternative, noting that the Navy has used nuclear power on ships for decades without accident, and that the French also use nuclear power. This devolves into a round of scripted France-bashing, leading to the question: Is it a straight trade? As a Republican acknowledging global warming, are you required to push nuclear power and make at least three anti-France jokes to atone?
Next he spoke briefly about government spending, aiming his pitch largely at the young people he imagined would be in the audience at a college (there were a few, but it was a fairly old crowd), and highlighting his appearances at an MTV forum and on the Daily Show. For the older people (or in the belief that college students venerate Reagan? I don't know) he promised to veto every earmark presented to him using a pen given to him by Saint Gipper himself.
Finally, the "transcendental challenge of radical Islam," "perhaps the greatest evil we've ever faced." Straits of Hormuz, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, General Petraeus, I criticized Rumsfeld, surge a success! If we leave Iraq, Al Qaeda will have won and that will not happen while I am president! (But if you happen to be opposed to the war yet willing to consider voting for me, I understand that and will not accuse you of hating the troops.)
One more suck-up to the New Hampshire primary, and he turned and dashed out. The crowd didn't linger, either.