I haven't attended an event that large in a long time and I forgot how much difference it makes being at a live event. While watching on the news would have given me a much better view, it was just incredible to see that many people. I was so far away that I spent a lot of the time helping out my neighbors pick out which one Obama was "see the lights, go down 45 degrees, he's in a white shirt". Here, I'll show you:
See him?
2 comments:
How was the speech?
The speech was pretty good. I think he spent a little more time on tax policy than I needed to hear. He was responding to attacks and diffusing the socialism accusation. It was for the cameras and the pundits to parse afterwards, not for the 100K people gathered there. He described a program that sounded close to the German's Bundesjahr, which would allow for free college to people who served in the army, worked at a hospital, joined the peace corps or worked as a volunteer in an underserved community. I dug on that, and so did the crowd (lots of people with kids where I was).
The last paragraph brought it home to the whole generational promise of America, that we are all here becuase either we or those who came before us sacrificed in the hopes that their children would live a better life. It's nothing too new, but somehow he was able to phrase it and say it in such a way that made a third and fourh generation German, Canuck, Czech and Russian like me feel like I shared something with him and everyone there. Dunno if it was the crowd, the previous parts of the speech, or my private hopes and dreams for Freddy, but that seemed to melt the jade right off.
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