Yesterday, I attended my second political rally at Obama’s
Seminole, Florida whistle-stop.
Back in ’83, I heard Gary Hart speak at the University
of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana
before some monkey business derailed his candidacy. Yesterday was Karen’s
second time seeing a President. Her first was a speech in ’88 when Reagan
bribed and bussed in a bevy of federal workers to the Capitol steps so his
speech wouldn’t seem unattended. Ah, the good old days of graft.
Were the President not speaking within walking distance, I
doubt either of us would have gone. I am half a political junkie though I prefer
the clarity of transcripts and certain insights on the internet to partisan
rallies. But how often in this life would I get to see a sitting President in
person? Not very. Four years ago, friends of ours made the pilgrimage to
witness his first inauguration. Theirs was truly a once-in-a-lifetime
experience.
So we braved the line at SPC Seminole on Wednesday evening to
get tickets then wandered down on Saturday morning two hours before Obama’s
speech. Like the President, we approached from the north. By the time we hit
113th, the road was already closed and guarded. Police, parks and
community officers manned the intersections and outposts. Red and blue lighted
sedans, SUVs and pickups lined both sides of the road.
Once on campus, we were greeted by a sea of diversity, with a
fleet of busses crashing like waves upon the shore, each moment disgorging more.
Across the street, a Civil War skirmish line of protestors, perhaps a hundred,
shouted their rallying cries, armed with the same battle flag that adorned our
side.
A Disney-esque line snaked its way through familiar parking
lots. A lone helicopter circled overhead. Pinellas’s finest were in charge of
the somewhat chaotic crowd control, complete with conflicting lawful orders. As
President’s motorcade crept nearer, they diverted and rediverted the line back
and forth from the road to the sidewalk before deciding where we posed the
minimum threat.
We formed an instant bond with the party of twenty-somethings
in front of us who came up from Sarasota.
Their day had started early. They were witty and knowledgeable, the perfect
companions for our wait. They even tried to convince a deputy we were among
their merry band of brothers when he broke the line just in front of us. But we
came together again soon enough. The only problem we encountered was a herd of
a half dozen self-identified and seemingly self-entitled fifty-something Republicans
trampling their way through the line. We ignored them as their t-shirts
professed they were engaged on the correct side of the argument.
At the end of the line, a mobile, scissoring sheriff’s watchtower
overlooked a gatehouse garrisoned by a company of uniformed Secret Service. We
entered a portcullis of a dozen metal detectors complete with magic wands. The
whistle and mini-flashlight on my keychain garnered extra attention but otherwise
there were no issues. A clutch of forcibly abandoned umbrellas lined a table
just outside like an impromptu, OCD garage sale.
The cordoned field enclosed a crowd eleven thousand strong.
Black uniformed silhouettes on the rooftops scanned us and the nearby woods for
threats through their binoculars. Inside, as in line, volunteers distributed free
water as light shields against the Florida
heat. Though the staffers trying to energize the crowd met with more muted
success. Despite the cloud cover, it was just too hot.
The day had dawned cloudy but not threatening. The field was
muddy, humid and stifling from a deluge two days before. The pleasant breeze
died as the sun emerged just in time to bear down upon the public press. We later
heard one hundred people collapsed from the heat, ten of them hospitalized. One
young woman was carried from the field by EMS like a
wounded soldier about ten yards in front of us.
The President was a fashionable fifteen minutes late, which
allowed most of the line behind us to file in. In later reports, we heard some
were turned away when we hit capacity. We were lucky to get in. Perhaps we
should have started our trek earlier.
Charming Charlie Crist performed the introduction. I will
resist using his other sobriquet as he has become an ally rather than an
adversary. He stood before the crowd as a former Republican governor citing how
his erstwhile Party had abandoned him. If nothing else, as a former Rockefeller
Republican from decades ago, I could empathize. The follies of my youth.
Here is where I must come to full disclosure. I am a Democrat.
Although Obama wasn’t my first choice, I want him to succeed. I have a laundry
list of reasons that it is unlikely I will ever again register as a Republican,
at least until they undergo some very serious reforms. In that party, in my
estimation, change must come from within. Still, I try not to let that distort
my lens.
After a series of chants and very eerie “four more years”
salutes from the crowd, Obama alighted at the podium. First, he recognized his
allies, Gov. Crist, Sen. Nelson, Rep. Betty Castor. Of those three, Crist
received the loudest cheers even though, unlike the other two, he is currently without
portfolio. Nelson’s name received only a slightly worryingly, tepid response.
Unlike Crist, the podium was not miked well for Obama. The
President was witty and interactive, improvising with the crowd. Unfortunately,
that meant each time he turned to speak to an individual supporter, he turned
away from the mikes at times leaving the rest of us in a Monty Python skit. ("Blessed are the Greeks?" "Oh, it's the MEEK!") Crist definitely knew better how to work the crowd and still maintain the microphone. That was perhaps the most disappointing experience of the day.
Obama spoke for half an hour almost precisely to the second.
It took the celebratory crowd five minutes before they calmed enough to listen
in. He sprinkled several clever sound bites in with a detailed, four-point plan
for moving the country forward. Prosperity comes from the middle out, not the
top down. This is an election about choice not cynicism. We have a responsibility
to keep the promises we’ve made.
His four points centered on creating manufacturing jobs, not
rewarding corporations for outsourcing; controlling the nation’s energy through
a diversity of domestic production; focusing on education to provide people
with the skills, degrees and financing they need to succeed; and responsibly reducing
the Federal deficit by rolling back taxes on the wealthy to the levels under
the Clinton Administration and the prosperity it saw, as well as using the
savings from ending two wars to pay down the debt.
Throughout, Obama came across soft-spoken. His speech was
full of light, prosperity and solutions, and a quiet hope, though he never
invoked that word. He sounded a clear counter-note to darkness and doom I constantly
hear from the other side, which seems to say that our best days are behind us, and
that tax cuts and gutting regulations are our only hope at salvation. As with
many points in their platform, their arguments seem to ignore the economists
and the advice of experts in favor of ideology.
The response from the crowd was more intriguing than the
speech itself. In rising levels of applause, people admired, third, Obam’s
bullet point on education, then, second, that bin Laden was finally dead. But
the single most uniting issue that saw the crowd spontaneously erupt to drown
out the President? His support of gay marriage and gay rights. That was perhaps
the most surprising response. Seminole is not exactly a bastion of liberalism
in admittedly moderate Pinellas County.
In fact, our state rep climbed into office two years ago from the depths of Tea
Party central.
In closing, Obama encouraged everyone to talk, not just to
people who shared their opinions, but to people who didn’t, Democrats,
Republicans and Independents. Dialogue is the mainsail of a successful
democracy. He then encouraged everyone to register and to vote. To reinforce
that point, he gave out a website:
Gottavote.com.
With that, we began the long, overheated walk back home,
downing more water, thankful that our training for Dragon*Con had prepared us
for the noonday sun. Just as there was a line to get in, there was a narrow, funneled
line to get out, directed by our county’s finest into trampling the landscape.
Tired after three hours of walking and standing in the Florida
heat, it took me the rest of the day to recover. After napping and downing a
couple Gatorades to rehydrate, Karen and I swung back by the campus on our way
to grab a quick dinner out. All the busses, staffers and supporters were gone,
leaving a only handful of workers to clean up the mess. Watching them bag up the
litter and discarded bottles, I saw a metaphor. The still cordoned off scene
seemed to resonate with so many experiences from the past four years and the fundamental
nature of democracy at work. In this case, perhaps, a work in progress.
A worthwhile experience despite the energy-draining heat.
One I’m sure I will remember fondly for many years to come regardless of the
outcome of this election.
© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III
