Obama, McCain: A tale of two Michigan campaign stops

Vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a McCain-Palin campaign event held at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre, Sterling Heights, Mich., with John and Cindy McCain and Rep. Candice Miller (photo: Minehaha Forman)

To really get a clear look at the America each of the presidential contenders is appealing to, it helps to attend back-to-back rallies — such submersion makes the comparisons fresher and potentially more striking.

Fortunately, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama provided such an opportunity recently, with McCain holding a rally in Sterling Heights on Friday and Obama hosting a town hall in Farmington Hills on Monday. Both events were open to the public, allowing an observer a chance to see who is attracted to each candidate, not just whom the candidates want to attract (as is the case with invitation-only events, like the “town halls” McCain holds).

It would be challenging to consciously choreograph two events more distinct from one another. My coverage of the two events contrasted the speeches of the candidates. But the events themselves — the crowd, the atmosphere, the signs and chants — deserve their own look.

First, the McCain rally. At Freedom Hill Ampitheatre, a crowd of just under 7,000 listened rapturously and cheered boisterously as McCain’s personal story of captivity during the Vietnam War was told, over and over again, by a long string of speakers. The McCain strategy of plucking the few people of color from the audience and seating them behind the candidate in view of the cameras seemed to have been abandoned: The hundred or so people on the stage were almost all white.

As the two-hour warm-up for the 30-minute candidate appearance progressed, the growing crowd became much more interesting than any speaker onstage (well, except the lone African-American speaker, a woman who derided welfare queens and said she’d been voting Democratic her whole life because during a mock election in the fourth grade her father told her to vote for Democrats. Huh?) The audience was a veritable visual feast: The band of young nuns in full habits, carrying hand-painted posters that said things like “Sarah Palin rocks.” The woman near the “Women for McCain” table smoking and wearing a T-shirt that read in large block letters, “OPRAH SUCKS.” The Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln impersonators. The high school cheerleaders leading a cheer from the base of the stage.

But that was just the fun stuff. The surreal abounded as well: A band warming up the crowd with Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools,” a song that Obama had sung earlier that week during his visit to Hart Plaza in Detroit (you know, the actual Motown), tweaking the words to sing “Change, change, change.” A crowd with nearly no nonwhite faces dancing (or doing something that was meant to be dancing) to an 8-year-old belting out the theme song from the “The Jeffersons.” And, as at the Republican National Convention, an audience that repeatedly and inexplicably burst into chants of “U.S.A.,” as though the opponent were either foreign or hated the United States. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what Republican operatives would like the public to think about Obama.

Then there was the Obama town hall. Held in a high school gym, the event drew a capacity crowd that looked, as my colleague Minehaha Forman said, “like ‘Sesame Street.’” It truly was a rainbow coalition, with audience members of all hues squeezing into the packed room. No music warmed up the crowd, and just one speaker and a couple of campaign volunteers preceded Obama and local resident John Ashcraft, an unemployed auto-industry worker, to the floor. Chants were sparse and ran along the lines of “Yes, we can.” Yet, despite the lack of rousing music or nationalist chanting, the crowd was beside itself with excitement. The Obama campaign has rightly derided McCain’s attempt to portray him as a vacuous celebrity. But there’s also no question that Obama is a rock star. He’d barely entered the room before a woman grabbed him forcefully and pulled his head down to kiss his cheek. (Obama’s Secret Service detail no doubt earns its wages.) Audience members spoke of seeing him multiple times, traveling to his speeches around the state as though they were following the Grateful Dead. Obama talked of his plans for the country and criticized McCain’s, but at no point did the tone turn snide. As he spoke, the air of thrill and excitement hung over the room, and it was easy to look around and think: This is the country I want to live in. The one where people of all backgrounds happily come together, led by a man who appeals to our higher selves.

Much has been made in the last few days of McCain’s bump in the polls and Obama’s less-than-gangbusters fund raising. But campaigns, in the end, are won on the ground. They’re won by a well-organized army of volunteers who know their neighbors and make sure they’re registered to vote, who talk to their friends and family about the candidate they support and who show up on election day to drive people to the polls. At every Obama event, anyone who takes the microphone, including Obama, makes a clear and specific plea for volunteer support. Monday’s town hall was no different. Just before Obama spoke, two of his campaign’s young female volunteers — both from Oakland County — announced their recent successes in registering voters locally and told the audience about a volunteer opportunity this weekend. They asked the audience to take out its cell phones and text the campaign in order to receive updates by phone. They mentioned the sign-up tables in the hall. In short, they provided several means of capturing and channeling all the enthusiasm in the room.

At Freedom Hill, none of the many speakers made one mention of how the audience could get involved in McCain’s campaign.