Cross-Posted from Take A Stand – My Home Blog – Please feel free to comment or bookmark over at my home blog, it’s new.
There’s only one thing better than seeing Barack Obama speak: Seeing him speak twice. So yesterday I took off work and passed up a day’s pay, grabbed my little white button, and headed out to New York city for a decidedly good day.
Barack spoke in NYC at the SEIU local union hall in Manhattan at 2pm, and then later at the Marriot in NYC at 5pm to a standing room only crowd of thousands at $25 a ticket. I volunteered, and it was a wonderful experience.
More Details beneath the fold…
First, my take on the Senator in person. Shorter than I expected, but every bit as commanding of attention. He was down to earth, good humored, and friendly. Not just on stage, but when he was hanging around shaking hands after the event as well. The secret service is less intrusive than expected, and are very nice guys. Barack has a great handshake and was jovial when I fumbled a thank you to him for providing us with our Camp Obama training. The second event I didn’t even try to get close due to the mobs being all over him.
One thing that struck me is that this is a guy who’s saying exactly the same thing no matter where he goes. Union halls, fund raisers, or the daily show. He’s the same guy, he’s excited, he’s humble, he’s inspiring, he’s confident, and he’s ready to lead.
Now, on to the specifics of the speech. I’m sure you’ll be able to find some video or recaps but here are some things that stuck out to me:
- He was very responsive and adaptive to the crowd. At one point in the first event, he said something to the effect of ‘We have real problems, but our government has this can’t do, won’t do, won’t even try attitude’ at which point someone yells out ‘don’t know how!’ to a nice laugh. The next event, that line was in his speech.
- He keeps bringing up his experience and how the media has been disingenuous about it. He was quite astute in noting that every time he makes a statement about froeign policy that’s different from the conventional wisdom, the media says oh that’s a gaffe. But then they start to analyze it and at some point it’s like, oh, really? We’re allowed to say that now? He really puts the media in their place on that point.
- He is very thoughtful in his approach. You can tell by watching him that he really thinks about what he says, and that he takes it to heart. Especially hearing him talk about community organizing, the power of the people, that sort of thing. Many politicians will draw applause lines by talking about how it’s you, it’s the people that make them great. But something about the way Obama does it, you believe him. And I do. I really think he wants this movement to be about us as much as him. He wants to change the world, he wants to reframe the debate, he wants to fix washington. But he wants to do it with us, not for us.
- He also talks about hope a lot. We already know this. But it struck me the way he talked about our problems. Yeah, we’ve got big problems. But he says that we can fix them. One point really struck a chord with me. We keep talking about taxes and oh how will they pay for this or that proposal. Well listen, we found the money to waste a half a trillion dollars on a war that made us less safe and killed a lot of people. If we can find the money for that, we can find the money to make sure everybody’s got health care and our kids can go to college.
So, I don’t want to harp on the speech points too much. You guys can go watch him speak on youtube or the daily show or something if you want. I really just wanted to give some of my reactions, as such a supporter, to actually seeing the man in person. I was not disappointed. Please, feel free to share your thoughts on meeting the man, or on why I’m so wrong, or whatever else you feel like talking about.
