Is the lustre Palin?

The thick plottens, as they say in the classics.
Sarah Palin has been sequestered with the Bush spin team, carefully secluded from the dangerous questions of the wicked, bad, inquisitive media. They are letting her out now on carefully-supervised appearances - oh, so well managed.

Almost. She did slip up on "Bush doctrine" showing that even a know-it-all might have a bit to learn. I'd love it if she started with evolution.

She delivered a well-written speech which played skilfully on the public's current economic fears and promising that overpaid CEOs would not be grossly overpaid if she and McCain were in power. Hmm. Not many votes to lose in that economic solution - especially for one who is desperately trying to play to the working and lower middle class demographic. The idea is that she is one of them, a Down Home hick who comes from the sorta stock who never needed an educayshun to run their hard-working little businesses. Funny thing that. I thought her dad was a teacher.

The Palins love to kill things in their spare time. They eat a lot of moose and caribou. She loves killing wild animals, wolves especially. She does it from the air.

We keep reading that she is "resonating" among American women - a sort of Annie Oakley thing.

But one reads that she and her snowmobile vroom-vroom husband make four-figure incomes and that she has been claiming per diems while living at home. Tsk tsk.

I've not heard these things on Fox but I have heard Fox starting to snipe at Palin. The gushing love affair, the fawning she-can-do-no-wrong policy has lapsed and, perchance, the Republicans are just a wee bitty worried about this loose cannon killer hockeymum and anxious about what stories are yet to come out about her.

Perchance she is as clean as the blood-drenched Alaskan snow.

Hillary - thoroughbred to the end

Hillary's speech to the Democratic Convention in Denver was so absolutely champion that I felt tearful and heavy-hearted.
There she was, giving a solid, sane, constructive, forward-thinking, genuine policy speech in the midst of all that Obama ephemera. Obama is a sophist. Hillary is a politician and presidential material.
If ever it was glaringly evident, it was as she gave that speech. Strong, brilliant woman.
I knew from the outset, I could feel in my waters, that she was the right one.
That feeling simply won't go away.

The way the cards have fallen, I just have to let go, as does and did Hillary Clinton.

But not before showing the world stage what a classy candidate she was.

Onwards, Obama.

Hillary's campaign knotches up

ACTION.
Not only are Bill and Hillary hitting Nashua tomorrow but also Hillary's Nashua campaign office has been born - almost.
It was still full of builders and paraphernalia when I arrived at midday today to man the ticket office for tomorrow's big Ready to Change, Ready to Lead tour event at the local university. I was supposed to meet Doug, the new Nashua region campaign organiser, outside the office to receive tickets, office keys and instructions but the door was open and Doug was not there. I was a bit perplexed, especially when people started rocking up for tickets. I scrounged around and set myself up with a chair and a little table and chatted apologetically to the arriving people.


Doug breezed in after about 20 minutes, just in time for a strong influx of ticket-seekers. While he sorted them out, I helped the friendly builder to haul out a desk and a big executive armchair - and suddenly the place took on a more authoritative look.

The people coming for tickets had RSVPed to campaign invitations to the event and were unable to print out numbered tickets from the Hillary website. Hence, they were mostly older people - except for those of the sleek New England bourgeoisie who were coming to pick up VIP tickets which we were keeping in named envelopes to one side. Doug trotted off to lunch and I had a pleasant time greeting, meeting and distributing these most coveted tickets. With Bill in tow, it is a stellar event on the Hillary campaign tour.

So much so that special signs are required.

After 2pm, it was sign time. Doug, who has driven all the way from California to work on the campaign here, produced a box of poster paints in primary colours along with mixing plates, foam brushes, large felt-tipped pens and a pile of large, thin cardboard art sheets. To begin with, there were just three of us - Doug, Kyra from the Manchester office and me.


As the afternoon wore on, volunteers rolled in and joined us on the floor. It was like a political playgroup - mixing colours and painting slogans. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. By the time we were through, there were about 13 of us, an delightfully disparate mix of ages, sizes and races. One very sensible woman chose to clean the windows instead of paint - and soon we had a bright, clean shopfront onto which she taped some of the new signs to complement the Hillary campaign signs and patriotic bunting.


A photographer from the Nashua Telegraph rocked up and snapped a million pix, concentrating on the two cute kids in our midst, of course. As they do. Newspapers love to run photographs of children. It made me a bit sad in this context insofar as this was not actually child's play - it was politics in motion. I would rather have seen people of voting age being depicted. But, hey, what can you do! The idea is to get the message into the paper by whatever means.




The Nashua campaign office is not on Main Street. It is off to the side on Elm Street. But, what it lacks in visibility it makes up for in size and facility. The ground level shopfront is handsome and spacious with a proper semi-enclosed office area at the back. Most significantly, it has a vast and spectacular basement - very smart and modern, freshly painted and wired and ready for banks of phones, printers, faxes, computers...
This will be the beating heart of the Nashua campaign.



Um, yes, one rather unconventional poster slipped its way in..
;)

McCain and his idiot sheet

It was pouring rain. They had given a "rain venue" address in case of such predicted weather but, as we drove past Veterans' Park in Manchester, there was the set-up for McCain's first stump speech as a presidential candidate, a sea of umbrellas and soggily loyal supporters. Why give a rain address and not use it?
Well, it became clear once McCain was up and talking - staring intently in front of him and rarely making eye contact with his dripping audience. There, hooded against the rain, was a giant teleprompter rolling large text! The man was READING his speech. A presidential candidate who did not know his own words! Is this the makings of the Leader of the Free World?



The nickname for teleprompters in Australia is "the idiot sheet". Need I say more?

Well, yes, of course I must.


Clearly, the logistics of moving the chunky great heap of technology which put words in McCain's mouth was the reason they decided to keep the event in the park. Moving it would throw out the whole schedule. As it was, McCain in his "Straight Talking" bus was late and we all stood about shivering and listening to Country music for over half an hour. "Straight talking" was what we got - a man talking straight to a teleprompt.

I didn't attempt to take notes in the rain, so I did not record the content of the speech. Since it is all written as a script, I am sure it is online and I am sure all the reporters were given nice, neat copies. Indeed, the only spontaneity of this political event was when McCain was forced to respond to the interjectors, calling and chanting for an end to the War on Iraq. He was not quick. First he absurdly thanked them, then he said this reflected American freedom of speech and, finally, he clued up enough to echo the New Hampshire motto: "Live Free Or Die".


There were lots of protesters dotted about outside the roped area of this event - brave and wet and passionate people. Predominant were the Ron Paul people waving placards asking "Who's the real maverick?" McCain likes to call himself the Republican maverick but, in fact, his track record is deeply conservative. Ron Paul of Texas, however, turns out to be the real Republican rebel, a congressman who voted against the Iraq War, against the Patriot Act and against regulating the Internet. I'd never heard of him. He turns out to be an obsetrician, of all things.



Amid the steely veterans in leather jackets and "Chosen Few" caps, there also were peacenicks holding anti-war placards and one couple with a long banner mocking McCain's appalling gaffe of singing "Bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran".

First sight of Rudy

Rudy Giuliani is the Republican Party's bright light as a presidential contender. He is beloved for the statesmanlike way in which he stepped up to the plate after 9/11 when the President seemed not to know what to do, and he is trusted for his track record in turning around crime and unemployment as Mayor of New York City.

Not that he is every Republican's cup of tea. He is a moderate rightist, daring to hold emancipated views on abortion and social justice - attitudes which enrage and alienate the NeoCons. He also has a terrible history with women, now on his third marriage after a really squalid break-up with his second wife, one which had the tabloids in ecstatics. And he has suffered prostate cancer. American voters like to think their Presidents are in top health and won't fall off the perch when in office.


In his big, sleek campaign bus, he came to Nashua today to speak at a breakfast for a National Leaders Forum in the vast neo-Tudor Sheraton Hotel. It had taken me a few phone calls to secure seats at this event which was hosted by local businesses and the Chamber of Commerce.

Indeed, it was anything but a people's events. It was men-in-suits all the way.

We were given 7.30am as the registration and start time, but Rudy did not turn up until after 8am, giving us plenty of time to drink watery hotel coffee and engage in small talk with the others at our table. One was a retired corporate management type who had barely said hello before he had had a little spit about how a lot of migrant voters barely spoke the language and should go home rather than vote. A very nice couple from Tennessee made for easier conversation. They are visiting their daughter in Nashua and thought this was a great chance to get a close, New Hampshire-style look at Giuliani. Such opportunities are uncommon elsewhere.

As always, the television cameras were on their dais at the back of the room with the usual couple of journalists sitting at their feet tapping away on Blackberries. Local press photographers milled around taking social snaps.

A heaving, great breakfast of scrambled eggs, pan-fried potatoes, bacon and sausage garnished with kiwifruit and orange was delivered to the table just as Rudy made his appearance. The cameras erupted in a barrage of flash and the former Mayor made his way down the side of the room amid a scrum of adoration.

Then, like the seasoned pro he is, he worked his way around the room, from table to table, signing autographs and shaking hands.
And there I was, with his silky hand in mine. Good heavens!