That's
JohnMcCain in the upper left with his wife, Cindy, on the right
and Congressman Peter King on the far right.
It almost looked like a Ku Klux Klan rally gathered outdoors in a field in Highland Park in Rochester on Saturday night. Except there was a black face in the crowd of over 1000 and we were only there on a lark We had just seen John McCain on CNBC with Chris Matthews and he was fun to watch. We like his stance on campaign finance reform and he doesn't shy away from the tough questions. He seems to say what he actually thinks.
Someone was passing out flags and we got one. There were no announcements, just loud Muzak for the first hour and then the national press bus pulled up and about fifty cameramen got off. The excitement level rose and they started playing Queen's "We Are The Champions."
Rep. Peter King introduced McCain. McCain introduced his wife and said he would "beat Al Gore like a drum." He spoke without notes and started each scattered, new topic with "My friends . . ." This rally was held next to Rochester's Viet Nam memorial and John McCain played to the the vets. He had a Marine on stage with him dressed in formal army gear who stood at attention for the whole talk.
John McCain was right there in front of us as he walked to the stage after showing up about an hour late. He was moving and my camera was moving.
He bounced from one issue to the next and didn't really get the crowd going. This was surprising to me. I mean it was about forty degrees out. I wanted him to work the crowd! Not enough show business, I guess. The national press certainly didn't get any new information from this stop. I wrongly expected some sort of positive message. Instead he was almost boring. He's better on tv.
He's certainly better than Bush but he is also scary. When he started talking about how as Commander in Chief he would not commit American servicemen without a clearly stated goal of 100% victory the crowd cheered. Like the world really is black and white.
When he got off on this Buddhist Temple campaign fund diversion issue that was in the news the day before, he was trying to slam Al Gore but he sounded like he was slamming "Buddhists in pink robes with incense burning". He's whacky in some ways and down home in others. If I was a registered Republican, I would vote for him on Super Tuesday but that is not saying much.
