If you look very closely around time marker :52, you can see me standing at the table in the left-rear background and buying some anti-Obama buttons. There is a tall young man wearing a red skullcap behind me and crossing from side to side.
Romney made several excellent statements, many of which all of us have heard before. However, there was no "magic in the air."
I can also think of three things that could have been done to make the rally more effective; after all, I've produced a lot of pageants during my 40 years of teaching.
Flaws:
(1) Should have been playing different music during the waiting time and to preface Romney's "grand entrance." The music was mostly songs from The Supremes. Strange choice, and I'm not sure how that music was supposed to relate to Romney's campaign.
(2) Seating arrangements were pathetic! My husband, a disabled veteran, and others who were less disabled or unable to stand for two hours, had to sit in the back of the room right in front of the raised press platform. No way could anyone sitting at the back of the room see a thing on the stage!
(3) I realize that the turnout was much greater than expected. Still, those assisting with the crowd were not well prepared and didn't really know what to do. Very poorly coached! In fact, we got all the way through security up close to the entrance in the back of the facility when, lo and behold, a flight of steps loomed before us! How could these people working for a Presidential candidate's campaign have allowed Mr. AOW, a man confined to a wheelchair, to have waited so long in a snaking line and to have gotten so far in the admissions process and not automatically have rerouted him to the front entrance where the handicapped were supposed to enter? None of the assistants running around in that big parking lot and supposedly directing the crowd knew what to do with regard to getting my husband inside, nor could they find someone who did know. They did manage to distribute a few bottles of water. That's about it.
(4) We had few offers for help with the wheelchair, particularly from those working the campaign stop. The man of the most help to us was a Vietnam veteran behind us in the line. He was going to carry Mr. AOW up that flight of stairs. Finally, the Secret Service intervened, and one of the agents pushed him around to the front entrance.
(5) Should have begun the program with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Clearly, Romney needs a better production manager for his campaign tours!
Some of the best moments at this event came afterwards when, FINALLY, one of the Romney workers offered to bring Mr. AOW outside for me to the side parking lot....
I went to get the car, parked quite far away (The Romney bus had blocked all the handicapped parking spaces!) and made a stop at the table that I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
While at the table I struck up a conversation with the young man in the skull cap ("B). Fascinating conversation with such a polite and considerate young man!
He hasn't yet decided for whom to vote and is doing his own research.
I know that "B" and I do not have much in common with regard to politics. He's on the Left and, as all know here, I'm on the Right.
But, hey, that's okay.
B is not a lemming; that is, he doesn't vote along party lines.
I continued the conversation as long as I could before going to fetch Mr. AOW. I wish that B and I could have spoken longer.
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