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Seeing Sarah

The only landmarks in the endless parking lot at Richmond International Raceway are large soda bottle signs on the light poles.

I parked beneath a bottle of Sprite. It turned out to be a wise decision. It was an hour and a half before the scheduled start of Sarah Palin's speech and the place was already buzzing with excitement. The parking lot was jammed.

The buzz was in no way diminished by the first person I ran into, a dour young man looking none too happy to be here. He was carrying a sign that said "Palin -- Criminally Insane."  

He said he couldn't stand the Republican vice-presidential nominee, nor could he stomach the hordes, mostly wearing red, there to support her. "I can't stand these people," he said, sounding angry and wearied at the same time.

I mentioned that this might be a rough crowd for him to work with his sign. He grimly nodded, and walked off as dutifully as a soldier re-enlisting. I next ran into a gentleman with a pro-Palin sign, which used her first name as an acronym, sort of (Sane Americans R Against Hussein Obama).

The press entrance was hopelessly jammed, and for a few minutes it looked bleak. Finally, they allowed local media to enter.

The foreign press was there. Reporters from Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Germany circulated buttonholing anyone willing to talk to them. The story will run in Australia that Virginians are pretty well-mannered folk. No bombthrowers here.

Anyone who says race is not a major, if relatively unexamined, factor in this race has a rather fluid idea of truth.

While futzing with my camera, I suddenly felt hot breath in my ear. An elderly, genteel white woman, who clearly recognized a liberal representative of the elite media, bleeding heart and all, when she saw one, had whispered something into my ear.

Startled, I excused myself and she repeated, "There's a black man here." She nodded her head and, sure enough, a black man and a black woman were standing six feet directly behind her.

Scanning the crowd, I saw more black people in the press pool than in the crowd at large. Richmond has a majority black population (approximately 57 percent), so how to account for the overwhelmingly white audience, estimated at 20,000 strong. Of the several dozen people I talked to, very informally, nearly all of them were from the surrounding counties.

Under the hot sun, the crowd was getting restless. The music did nothing to help their impatience.

Why do politicos have such bad taste in music? "Eye of the Tiger?" ("it's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill [lyric sites say 'cream' instead of 'thrill' but I'm not buying it] of the fight, rising up to the challenge of our rivals.")

Jerry Kilgore , former VA Attorney General and current chairman of McCain's campaign in the state, kicked off the proceedings. He offered a prayer and even this wasn't free from a partisan slant. He thanked his Christian God for leaders such as John McCain and Sarah Palin who would keep America Safe.

He dropped the word "maverick" into all the right places, and expressed his opinions that Obama is untested, that he will tax Americans blind and that he cannot keep America safe. The second speaker (didn't catch his name) played the same tune, in the same key. He too repeated the maverick credentials of McCain-Palin.

Next came Jim Gilmore . If he is bothered by his dismal poll numbers, you couldn't tell it. He was more energetic than his predecessors, and hitched his wagon to both McCain and Palin, as in, "Who's going to win in November? McCain – Palin – Gilmore." This phrase was repeated several times, a bygone hope for a campaign out to sea.

By this time, the heat was becoming a force. Directly behind me was the computer control for the teleprompter on stage. (see photo gallery) I could clearly read Palin's speech on the computer screen, "Robert, thanks for that kind introduction …"

Of course there was no Robert introducing her, so that notation must have been from her speech in Virginia Beach only hours before. This speech was the same one she gave in the morning. In fact, it is the same one she delivered several days ago in Ohio.

After she arrived on stage to a roaring crowd, Palin brought out Hank Williams Jr. in a Redskins jersey, who shouted, "Are you ready for some Sarah." After Juniorizing the national anthem, he did a bastardized and politicized version of his biggest hit, "Family Traditions." I had the ineluctable sense that his daddy was turning over in his grave, if not on account of his son's politics, at least for his crassness.

Palin's speech was unremarkable.

If one were to read it on the page devoid of context, in this case 20,000 riled up supporters, one would be underwhelmed. What was remarkable was the absence of attacks against Obama such as those she's used in the last several weeks. No mention of Obama palling around with terrorists, no mention at all of William Ayers or Rev. Wright.

The speech was toned down, retooled for a public weary of negative attacks. She had plenty to say about the Democrats though, attacking them for being tax and spend liberals, of not being experienced enough and insinuating that they are business as usual in Washington.

She mentioned how, if elected, McCain will get all mavericky, how he will fight corruption on Wall Street, how he will rein in spending and fight for veteran's rights, all things we have heard before. One new item was a mention of election fraud, ostensibly perpetrated by Democrats. This was perhaps an allusion to the allegations involving ACORN, though it went unexplained.

She's clearly improved as a speaker. Her delivery was competent, and, with one minor glitch, she was composed throughout. At one point, supporters in a distant location shouted that they could not hear her. She mistook them for protesters and admonished that their free speech was paid for by the sacrifices of the war veterans in the audience.

She seldom strayed from the script, to judge from the teleprompter. It was a bit like playing all the white keys on a piano. By repeating the same speech often enough, she's become adept at delivering it.

Her handlers have her on a short leash indeed. This is a mistake. They ought to play out the leash a little, give Palin free rein to speak from her heart. People clearly like her, she energizes crowds not so much by what she says, but by how she says it, her down home inflections and tone.

For example, she did an extended riff on caring for special needs children, something she has a vested interest in as she and her husband have a son with Down syndrome. I hope this was something she pushed to have added to counterbalance the blandishments of the rest of the speech.

This part of her speech was greeted well, even though it meandered a bit in the middle. But it was simultaneously the least polished part of the speech, and the most human and real. It's easy to imagine that people can connect with her on a mother's hope for her child.  

There were the usual applause pauses, some expected and some rather inexplicable. Are Republicans really fired-up about mining more coal, pun intended? Mention of mining more coal got a big response for some reason, and for the life of me, I could find no one who could tell me why, specifically.

Overall, I was struck that these events, these rallies, are really just an advertising opportunity, and that goes equally for Democratic events. They are free press.

I seriously doubt that many in attendance were anything less than fervent supporters of the Republican ticket. No minds were changed; no one saw light where once they wandered in darkness. It was another political speech, long on promises and short on specifics.

It did give Virginia Republicans a shot in the arm; some needed juice before what promises to be a close election.

And so, I began my search for a large bottle of Sprite.