Terre Haute

The Barack Obama campaign made national headlines yesterday, and I was there.

The story starts on Thursday, at 5 a.m. as I leave for a two hour trip north from Evansville to a town called Terre Haute. The early start is due to an event at 9 a.m. Actually, it's an event within an event... we are passing out free tickets to a "town hall" meeting with Barack Obama. On our way north, pop music blares on the radio, as we passively wait for the DJ to come on again with the local news. After each song, the reported turnout seems more ominous as people queue en masse in the wee hours... at one point, the DJ announces the arrival of police following a minor scuffle. However, we arrive to a largely peaceful crowd and hand out over two thousand tickets to local residents.

On a side note... some perspective is required here. An event with 2-3 thousand is a decent sized event, filling a large high school gym. However, this amount is no pittance... it takes three hours just for everyone to sign their name for these tickets. Even after weeks of nonstop events such as these, we would be lucky for 5% of the expected 1 million voters in the Indiana primary to see Obama in a crowded room.

After the ticket distribution: back to the Terre Haute HQ for my daily business. Only this is no ordinary day. Within an hour, I become aware of a staffer I haven't met before (there are only 3 full time staffers in the TH office). As he walks away, though, I'm struck with an odd sense of deja vu. Only it's not deja vu... as this guy was actually in my graduating class in high school back in LA (roughly 2,500 miles away).

It turns out Jake is part of the "advance team" preparing for the arrival of the senator. I am quickly recruited to aid him over the next few days with management of the press. We spend the remaining period running through the event, preparing the set-up, and overseeing the coordination with other steakholders, including the ominous Secret Service (who are my new favorite people). We spend the entire time in this high school gym, setting up barriers, press file areas, camera platforms, and a miriad of other small items. I am struck by the competence of the people instructing me, as we methodically move through an endless list of details to be sorted.

Friday evening, after much controlled mayhem, Obama takes the stage. I sit right off to the side with the press as the man himself comes on stage with an early direct attack at his opponents. Apparently, while we were isolated in this remote location, the campaign was receiving allegations of being "out of touch" with the American people. In a campaign focused on community based engagement, I believe the senator took this rather personally, and gave an impressive account of how our current status quo has failed the American people, aided by both Clinton and McCain (who were each individually criticized by name).

Even then, my isolation prevented me from realizing the significance of these statements. It wasn't until I turned on CNN the next morning that I realized this attack was the most direct confrontation of this campaign. Furthermore, this was deeply rooted, focused on the sincerity of a popular message.

Defending this sincerity wasn't just a soundbite, but the theme for the night... while the talking points were probably largely the same (as my campaign friends say they generally are at these events), the framework was entirely within the context of restoring credibility to American politics. A simple foreign policy question turned into a general willingness to accept criticism and responsibility. A question on VP candidates turned into a general assertion of why someone should be motivated to go into public service. A question on hurricaine Katrina was used as a springboard to vindicate our entire public sector, with links to low standards in education policy to the media's sensationalist standards.

While I believe more and more that the campaign is less about the candidate than the values of a growing coalition. I am constantly reassured by seeing a passionate and candid candidate.