Today, I was lucky enough to attend Senator Obama's speech at the Cooper Union. The excitement surrounding the event was immense. Cooper (a school which grants all students full tuition scholarships in engineering, architecture, and art), does not usually have much political discourse within the campus, but within hours of receiving the e-mail announcing the speech, the whole student body was abuzz. The response in demand for tickets was unexpected and students (myself included) waited over two hours yesterday to secure tickets with over half of those showing up having to be turned away (only 150 available to students). The excitement continued into this morning where, under heavy sniper fire, students lined up two hours before seating began to be a part of history.
The speech itself was an amazing opportunity. Watching the videos of Obama's speeches on youtube can't compare to the emotion and feeling you receive when seeing him deliver it in person. You can see and hear that Senator Obama is not just delivering words, but speaking from his heart and really addressing the issues to confront us today. It also pleasantly surprised me to see Obama start to carry the ideas of the blogosphere into the main political discourse. Obama declared McCain as running for Bush's third term and questioned why, if we can bail out major corporations, we can't similarly bail out the American citizen.