Seeing Sarah in person!

Yesterday, Pam and I drove up to Fort Wayne and waited outside in the cold for 2 hours to get into a Sarah Palin rally. Both of us, along with our buddy Kirsten Metz who accompanied us, agreed that it was well worth the wait. Maddy went along, too, but she is not available for comment. :)

Several impressions linger some 24 hours later, most overwhelmingly the electric atmosphere! The Allen County War Memorial Coliseum probably seats 15-16,000 people, maybe more, and there were very few empty seats, even way up in the nosebleed section. The rally was supposed to have gotten underway at 6:30, but it was after 7:00 before Indiana Republican Chairman Murray Clark stepped to the podium. He spoke for a few minutes then brought on Congressman Mike Pence from our 6th District.

I LOVE MIKE PENCE!!! (Is that unambiguous enough?) I have been an admirer for years, but hearing this unabashed conservative Christian congressman in person was a genuine thrill. This is a man who has already made a lot of waves in Washington in 8 short years, and is destined for a very bright future. He recounted a very touching anecdote about traveling to Iraq in April 2007 with Lindsey Graham and John McCain and meeting the leading Sunni sheikh who spearheaded the Sunni Awakening that preceded the calming of hostilities in the region. This sheikh (who lost his life to an assassin's bullet 3 months later) warmly greeted both Pence and Graham and welcomed them to the country. When he saw John McCain, however, he took McCain's hand in both of his and said, "Senator McCain, I and my family highly respect you and your family as great American warriors who have fought for peace for generations." I can't do the story justice, but it was the most powerful I have heard in the whole campaign, aside from McCain's own POW memories.

Pence was then followed by Congressman Mark Souder of the 3rd District (of which Fort Wayne is a part). Souder spoke for a few minutes...a good guy, but not the orator or across-the-board conservative stalwart that Pence is (Pence voted twice against the bailout; Souder voted for it the second time around).

There was a brief lull and then a groundswell of applause as Hank Williams, Jr. walked out unannounced to the stage and picked up his guitar. He riffed right into "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight", changing words here and there to fit the occasion. He did a few more songs, including a deadringer version of Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line" and my favorite Bocephus tune, "A Country Boy Can Survive."

After rocking the house for 20 minutes, Hank took his bow and then, our own Lieutenant Governor Becky Skilman came out to introduce Sarah Palin. I had not seen Skilman before and was highly impressed. (A personal aside: Skilman was in the middle of a graduate program with Indiana Wesleyan University in 2004 when Mitch Daniels called and asked her to be his running mate. She dropped out, but plans to return when she leaves office.) She received enthusiastic cheers when she asserted that "Sarah Palin could have come out of any small town in Indiana!"

And then it was time for the lady herself. As she emerged from the wings, with Todd, Piper and Willow in tow, the crowd just went wild; there is no other way to put it. Everyone was on their feet, cheering, whistling, shouting, pumping fists...I have never seen anything like it. Even at the Barack Obama rally in May, where there certainly was tremendous energy and excitement, it did not appear that it was about him as much as what he seemed to represent. The reservoir of affection on the part of the Republican base for Sarah Palin is enormous.

Sarah spoke for 40 minutes, according to the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. Probably 10 minutes of that was consumed by cheers for her and jeers at Obama. The crowd was ready for red meat and she gave it to them with repeated jabs at Obama's socialist tendencies and persistent questions about his record. I did notice that there were no questions about his associations, though.

I have seen different news accounts over the last few days that paint a picture of Sarah Palin as having given up on McCain and already embarking on her own Presidential run in 2012. I can see where this is coming from, but it is manifestly unfair to characterize it along this premise. Palin did McCain every justice she possibly could do him; she did not tout her own record at his expense, and repeatedly boosted McCain's bona fides. But, looking back on the whole event, it is abundantly clear that Palin has greater star power than McCain. She talks the talk, she taps into the conservative spirit and in short, she is just a natural. McCain is a leader and a hero, and is likable, but does not have the charisma in spades that Sarah exudes.

One more story....I am wondering if I will wind up in a documentary about this campaign. I was on an aisle seat, which the ushers were kind enough to give us, since we had Maddy's stroller and oxygen tank with us. We were all standing waiting for Sarah to come out (I forget who was on stage at that moment) when suddenly there was a woman who had very unobtrusively emerged and was videoing Pam and me as I held the baby and cheered and Pam operated our videocam. The lady took several seconds worth of video, then put down her camera and walked a few steps closer to look at the baby. I was only halfway paying attention until she asked how old Maddy was. As I answered "3 months", I turned and looked her in the eye for the first time....Have you ever had the experience where you KNOW you should know someone and your brain starts doing the computer search move, frantically trying to come up with a name? She looked at Maddy for a few more seconds, then darted away. She hadn't been gone 10 seconds before I realized we had just been videoed by Alexandra Pelosi. Yes, Nancy Pelosi's daughter. She did a documentary on the 2000 campaign called "Journeys with George" while covering candidate George W. Bush for NBC. She has since gone on to other work, most notably "Friend of God", where she examines religion in Red State America. (I have not seen it, but have heard that...surprise, surprise... it is not terribly friendly to its subjects.) So...that was, well, both a little unsettling and interesting!

A good time was certainly had by all!