On Friday, October 26th, Barack Obama appeared at a rally put on by his campaign at Union Station, in St. Louis. Up to this point I had been following several presidential campaigns, but had been unable to attend any events. Thanks to two things--a new job to help pay the donation to get in, and a day off from that new job--I was able to go, and see my first presidential campaign rally since (gasp!) 1988.
It was a great experience, and while I didn't come away from it totally sold on the candidate, I did develop a new appreciation for his ability to engage a crowd on the stump. Story,photos, and commentary below the fold.
The email I recieved stated that the gates would open at 5PM, on the south parking lot of Union Station. I arrived around 4PM, to find that a line had already formed. Friendly Obama volunteers directed me to where I could get a ticket ($25.00 general admission, or $15.00 for students) and I filled out the paperwork. It didn't take long, and as opposed to those who bought tickets online, I had a nice souvenir:
Weather on the day of the rally was chilly, with intermittent rainfall, so I was rather impressed that the line got very long behind me after I bought my ticket:
The first thing that struck me about the attendees was how young so many of them were. There are a number of universities in St. Louis, and the event was heavily promoted on the campuses. Older people did come out also, many of them in business suits after their day at work. Workers from SEIU came out as well.
Just before 5 they started letting us into the rally area, which was simply an area of the parking lot cordoned off with heavy crowd control fencing:
I went in and got a place right on the fence in front of stage right, which gave me an unobstructed view. While we were waiting, we were entertained by a "high school drum line"--whoever introduced them (who looked like part of the security detail, of all people) forgot to mention the high school they were from. After that, we had a couple of warm-up speeches from local Congressmen Russ Carnahan (MO-3) and Lacy Clay (MO-1), who are endorsing Obama for the nomination.
Wm. Lacy Clay (far left) and Russ Carnahan (far right) listen to Obama speak. I believe the two unidentified men are local St. Louis politicians, but I didn't get their names.
As Clay was finishing up, the crowd on my side began to cheer, because Obama was in sight, walking towards the stage. Obama jogged up to the fenceline and shook a few hands on our side, then went on stage to a very loud welcome. Rally signs reading Change We Can Believe In were waving everywhere, along with a few handmade signs passed out earlier by Obama volunteers (no one could bring in signs to the rally).
Obama was given a hand-held mike, and had the stage to himself, other than a woman doing sign-language translation. I had seen him before at the Yearly Kos breakout, and at that time I noticed that he did not like standing behind a lectern, but instead prowled the stage, looking out into the crowd as he spoke. He did the exact same thing at the St. Louis rally:
Though he got his biggest cheers attacking the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, his principal message was, "we have to change the way business is done in Washington," offering up health care reform, or the lack of it, and energy independence as examples. He took a clear swing at Hillary Clinton, though without mentioning her name, saying "Elect me because I know how to play the game in Washington better," which he followed by stating that he intended to put an end to the game-playing in Washington.
On the energy independence front, he used his sense of humor to make his points. Talking about why energy prices kept going up, he said, "It doesn't help when you put my cousin Dick Cheney in charge of energy policy," adding, "we've been trying to hide that for a long time. Everybody's got a crazy uncle in the attic!"
Most of his speech touched on familiar themes of bringing people together to solve common problems, but he did surprise some of us by saying that he was "impatient" to do something about education, health care, and the war in Iraq, saying that he would bring a "bit of anger" to his job as President.
Obama spoke for about 20 minutes, and had the crowd with him most of the way--there were a few "dead spots" in his speech, but not many. When I looked around I saw quite a few smiles and quite a few nods. For his part, I saw him seeming to make eye contact with individual people in the crowd. There were a few times he seemed to be looking directly at me.
After his speech ended, he began working the crowdline. I was stage right, and he began working stage left, surrounded by his security detail. Watching him with the crowd, they seemed thrilled to be shaking hands with him--but more to the point he comes across as being just as happy to meet the people as well. It might have been just an old politican's trick rather than his "new kind of politics" but I thought Sen. Obama related to the crowd extremely well.
Before the speech one of his guards had told us that he would sign things, but not to hold them over the edge of the fence. Since I had gotten to shake his hand at Yearly Kos, I thought I would let my friends in the crowd line have a go at that, and instead try to get his signature on my rally ticket. When he got to me--and I had to shout to be heard--I asked him if he would sign it. He replied, "no man, I can't--there's just too much here to sign."
Or something like that. You see, when he told me that (he had to shout also), he was looking directly into my eyes, and he had both hands on each of my shoulders. It was so unexpected I'm not sure if I even replied coherently; hopefully I said something like "thanks anyway" or "good luck". He finished with the crowd line, and left to thunderous cheers.
After the rally, I did some walking around in Union Station, thinking. I thought the rally was a success, yet I still wasn't entirely sold on Obama as my candidate. Watching him with the St. Louis crowd left me no doubt that he could connect with people, and he certainly was good at speaking, yet I didn't leave with a single unifying message as to why I should vote for him. Whether or not he actually needs something like that I'll leave to those far more knowledgeable about campaigns than I am. But it did bother me that, as someone who is arguably much more plugged in to the campaigns than most Americans, that I couldn't think of a simple message that said "Obama" to me.
The other thing that is both a blessing and a curse for Obama is his propensity for caution. Given that our current President is not known for thinking things through, or exercising caution on many things, a President that is thoughtful and measured would be an improvement. That said, I think he could have moved faster to join Sen. Dodd's filibuster of telecom immunity, and I've also been aware that he tends to hang back on Senate votes and be one of the last ones to do so; we all saw that with a Iraq supplemental vote a few months back. If he took bolder action on things he knows is right, I think a lot of us might jump off the fence.
Finally, I was aware of the controversy about his campaign's hire of a known homophobic singer for his South Carolina campaign. I definitely didn't approve of that, and briefly considered skipping the rally, thus not giving their campaign my $25.00. In the end, though, I went because it was one of his first appearances since the controversy broke on the blogs, and I wanted to see if he would address it, or if there might be protests, or if there might be heckling. The answer is: none of the above. I wasn't surprised that he didn't say anything, but was surprised there was no apparent backlash from anyone at the rally.
All that taken into consideration, I'm still pretty impressed with Obama, and would have been even if he hadn't put his hands on my shoulders! He's promising to be more aggressive in his campaign, and I'll be an interested observer. He may yet get my vote when Illinois has its primary!