I'm finally getting around to writing about Obama's Presidential campaign announcement in Springfield, a week after it happened. I've been spending a lot of time snowed-in at home without web access. ugh!
Be careful of offering to "do anything" when volunteering for a campaign. You never know what you'll get stuck with. I ended up helping to get luggage for the staff and press from the hotel to the airport. The down side is that I didn't see most of the event in person. The up side is that I didn't freeze my rear off in the cold and I got to meet some cool people.
Among those were some national reporters like Candy Crowley from CNN and Joe Klein, who wrote Primary Colors. Some Chicago reporters were there as well, including Lynn Sweet who was very nice and frequently writes about Obama on her blog. Its easy to take extra notice of people who are cordial when you're dealing with a group of self-important people.
I also saw traveling with the press corp our own local (and not too self-important) reporter Sara Wojcicki. I imagine that it must have been fun for her as a local reporter to travel with the big-time national press on the campaign airplane. There's nothing like the excitement of a major Presidential campaign. I liked seeing her reports about it on TV 20.
Speaking of which, the campaign took a rented 757, filled with all the staff, press, Barack and his family, from Springfield to the next stops in Iowa and Chicago. The buses people saw at the Old State Capitol were only going to the airport. The guy managing the air operation said he did the same thing for almost all of the Presidential Primary campaigns in 2003/4. We talked about the politics of who gets seated where on the plane and the lengths some people go to in order to getter a better seat closer to the candidate. Sometimes, even Presidential campaigns resemble High School.
While getting the press luggage loaded onto the truck at the hotel I was sorely tempted to "lose" the Fox News bags but good judgement got the better of me. Besides, I couldn't tell which bags were theirs. We did separate the CNN luggage because they were getting off early. When someone asked which pile was theirs, I pointed and said, in my deepest James Earl Jones voice, "This is CNN's luggage." Then my friend and I said it about another dozen times that day and laughed every time. Corny, but at least I made myself laugh.
Another bonus of having airport detail was meeting some of the staff on hand for the event. Most of those I met were only there for the week of the announcement. Some that I talked to want full-time jobs with the campaign, while others were only there temporarily for the announcement tour. Many of them were former John Kerry campaign staffers. I think it was a great idea for the campaign to bring in so many experienced people. They did an excellent job and its a reminder that Obama will have no trouble recruiting highly qualified staff from around the country.
So far, the other Presidential campaigns have made much smaller announcements. Hillary Clinton announced on the internet and made phone calls. John Edwards accidentally announced when his website went up a day early and then had an event in New Orleans that was smaller than Obama's. It's not easy to organize an announcement tour the size of what Obama did. Its especially difficult for a new campaign that doesn't have its staff fully in place yet.
Obama passed his first big organizational test by starting his campaign with a large-scale event that went smoothly and generated excellent press coverage. If this is a sign of things to come, then he'll have no trouble competing with the other campaign operations.
If I have time in the next day or two, I'll post a couple pictures I took and write about my impressions of the speech.