Sleepless at 7:15
[Joe Trippi has just declared me the first blogger to travel as a blogger on a presidential press bus. Woohoo! I think I’ll print myself up a certificate!]
There are four buses for the press and staff. I looked in each and picked the studious one where most people have their laptops out. I’m just that sort of guy,
Joe Trippi’s son just came through with an assortment of potato chips. I chose BBQ because it just looks so professional to have your fingertips and lips ringed with orange flecks.
I’m sitting next to Patsy Wilson from Reuters; she’s got a White House press pass hanging from her bag. In front of me, Mario from the Getty Archive is editing some photos he’s taken of the event: bring a face out of the shadows, turn up the contrast on a woman holding a Dean sign, upload it via a cellphone modem. Isn’t technology amazing?
It’s quite a collection of journalists. Maybe 30 of them. CNN. The NY Times. Reuters. C-SPAN, Newsweek. Fourteen months before the election. This must be what momentum feels like.
On the plane now. It’s a chartered 737 sitting on a back leg of the airport. No metal detectors here, but they do a thorough job going through everyone’s luggage. The press sits in the back of the plane, the staff in the front. Plastic clumps of grass are taped to the seats because this is a “grassroots” campaign, which is somewhere between charming and hokey.
The Governor enters the plane last of all. (Yes, they wand him before he enters … you never know, given his stand on gun control, he could be packing heat :) The press crowds the aisle, pointing cameras at him. Now it’s like a rugby scrum except with cameras and inside a plane. The Governor talks with reporters until we’re all told to sit down so we can take off…
We’re half an hour into the trip and it’s a bit of a party. People are standing in the aisles. There are dozens of conversations going on. It’s festive.
Some of the staffers are sleeping, having worked their butts off for an event that pumped up a crowd of 4,000+. I’ve talked with some of them and they feel they’ve turned a corner. The campaign is on its way. (One of the journalists on the bus said that you can tell a lot about a campaign by how well organized the press facilities are and this campaign was running exceptionally smoothly.)
It’s festive but it’s also weird. Behind me, one media person is interviewing another about her reaction to the campaign so far. The Governor is sitting with a staffer, and the cameras are on. Always. You could desalinate a small pond with all that a wattage.
The plane is touching down…
All these entries are cross-posted at the Dean campaign blog
Categories: Uncategorized dw
David, if you’re to continue using rugby analogies then please consider these two fine components of the game:
1. The ruck – the ball and usually someone who was just tackled lie on the ground while 10 big fellows try to get at the ball with their boots. Their boots with big spikes on them.
2. The rolling maul – just how it sounds.
Scrums are entirely too well organised to describe what I suspect you’re reporting on. For a start everyone stops and thinks it over first. The plays listed above both occur organically at the breakdown of open play, no ref involved.
Best regards,
-Tim
Oh, I’ve just discovered that this foreigner is not allowed to contribute to the Dean campaign. Guess I shall have to wait for the green card. Exactly how do they police that if people are sending in money via the Internet? Moreso cash.
They’re probably doing address verification on the credit card. This will mean that Americans living abroad have to use their US credit card, but should prevent real actual foreigners from donating.
I wonder…
As the first blogger to blog on a presidential campaign bus, will we one day see your posts in the Smithsonian?
The blogger on the bus
Looks like my bud David Weinberger has become the first blogger ever to travel in a presidential candidate’s press bus. Check out David’s dispatches from Howard Dean’s Sleepless Summer tour.
It appears that the VA rally wasn’t mentioned in the Sunday Washington Post, which really surprised me. Someone on the VA-Dean list mentioned that they saw at least three Post people there.
For those who don’t know DC geography, Falls Church VA is just outside of Washington DC, inside the beltway and on the Metro’s Orange line.