Little More Than "On Message"

PORTLAND, ME. John McCain;s "public event" in Portland yesterday was unlike any campaign stop I've covered. Part red and white checkered picnic tables and part jacket and tie affair, I was expecting to find a more sober scene outside the Maine Military Museum. It's common knowledge that the McCain campaign has been looking for ways of taking the media attention off of Barack Obama's trip to the Europe and the Middle East, but I was expecting a more spirited attempt from his schedulers.

To start, visiting Maine was an interesting choice by McCain. Though McCain could pass off the appearance as an opportunity to throw his weight behind Maine's freshman Senator, Susan Collins, who is up for re-election this year, she already leads her Democratic opponent up to 25% in recent polls. John McCain also faces a steep uphill battle in Maine against Barack Obama; the state has voted Democratic in five consecutive presidential elections, and that trend seems unlikely to change in a year Obama is making inroads in a handful of traditional Republican strongholds.

The McCain campaign likely chose the Maine Military Museum to surround their candidate with veterans and an audience that respects McCain's foreign policy credentials. McCain didn't hesitate to draw distinctions between McCain's military experience and Obama's perceived inexperience and decision to travel abroad to improve his international reputation.

"I'd rather be here at the Maine Military Museum than anywhere else in the world," McCain opened his remarks. Focusing on two issues of national security—America's dependence on foreign oil and the War on Terror—McCain worked to show that Obama's stances on critical issues fail to take into consideration larger policy implications.

Finally, after asking the veterans in the crowd to identify themselves (about one in four raised their hands), McCain vocalized his support for the current strategy in Iraq and General David Petraeus. Obama, McCain said, refused to condemn MoveOn.org's "General Betray-us" advertisement last year. The crowd booed Obama and cheered for McCain, but it was far from the rousing moment McCain would need to overshadow Obama.

McCain is the more experienced candidate, especially on issue of national security and foreign policy, but he'll need more than patriotic picnics and friendly crowds to chip away at Obama's momentum.

Get Me Out of Here

I've been holed up in the attic editing videos all week, and while clips load and transitions render I've been surfing around YouTube and RealClearPolitics, reading and watching whatever I find.

As a result of working for VoteGopher.com, a website that compares the presidential candidates on the issues, I have learned a great deal about John McCain and Barack Obama on policies that matter a lot to me. Using VoteGopher's "My Ballot" feature and opting not to put unduly high emphasis on "Message" or "Controversies," my results came out to be a tie—22 points for McCain, 22 points for Obama.

To be honest, I was floored by those results. Back in June I took a similar candidate quiz and, though by a small margin, favored Obama. After spending hours and hours editing 25 videos comparing Obama and McCain head-to-head, things are getting a lot closer in my mind.

After hearing McCain and Obama talk about terrorism, Iraq, and Afghanistan on the campaign trail countless times, I no longer see Obama's move to pull out of Iraq immediately as a good thing, and after reading this today I wonder if Obama's foreign policy plans aren't based on some popular assumptions about Afghanistan as "the right war."

Now that I've sorted through position videos and papers about the two candidates' positions on education, I wonder if McCain is really leading the way by proposing to move towards the use of vouchers. This article makes it seem as if Obama's plan is a little "old school" in an un-Obama kind of way.

And on energy, I'm not convinced that we shouldn't explore options for certain domestic oil drilling projects. It seems stubborn to rule out cleaner and safer oil drilling as a healthy complement to the widespread introduction of alternative energies in the United States. McCain has long intrigued me on the issue of the economy, but he's now starting to convince me.

On top of it, all I seem to hear about Obama recently is "Speech in Berlin" and "Open Convention!" Not to mention a stead stream of creepy, Obama-cult garbage like this video on YouTube:

[If we're accusing Obama of having a big ego, we should label Will.I.Am and all the other celebrity political preachers in his videos similarly]



Give me an open road to Maine, some McCain events, and two days or so to clear my head from Obama—he and I really need some time apart.

Make it Two

Add a "Rochester, NH Town Hall" with John McCain into the mix for next week, and my excitement for next Monday as really escalated.

After three Obama events in a row I'm ready to hit the campaign trail with McCain again, especially in a city I've yet to visit for the 2008 campaign (Portland, ME) and a town where I already have a lot of great memories (Rochester, NH). 

On August 8th, 2007 I visited Rochester, NH's Opera House to see Hillary Clinton deliver a policy speech about the critical state of America's infrastructure. In case you don't remember, the Minneapolis bridge collapse had occurred just weeks before, and I was quick to jump on Clinton's case for delivering what I saw as an opportunistic speech. 

You can read my full post about the event HERE.

Though I was far from a Hillary supporter last August, the event at the Rochester Opera House would lead me to build a campaign friendship of sorts with an older couple in Rochester that would really open my eyes to Hillary Clinton and her message. It is safe to say that the event began to change the way I thought of Senator Clinton, and I will remember that event as one of the highlights of my time on the campaign trail.

So is McCain's event in Rochester next week destined to be equally memorable? Perhaps.

To start, McCain is holding his town in the same Opera House I visited almost a year ago...

A New State

Next Monday (July 21st) I will be in Portland, Maine to attend campaign events for Senator John McCain.

In a state John Kerry won by 8%, McCain currently trails Barack Obama by nearly double that margin. It will certainly be interesting to see what strategy McCain adopts in this large yet electorally-unimportant state as he tries to chip away at Obama's lead.

More than that, Maine will become the seventh state in which I've covered the 2008 campaign—a development I'm looking forward to celebrating.