Monday, December 03, 2007

JOHN MCCAIN

McCain Meets MTV/MySpace: The Wrap Up

McCain, at the finish line of the MySpace/MTV candidate forum*: The instant poll says 37 percent strongly agree with McCain, 23 somewhat agree with McCain, 13 percent say "I'm not sure, but he might be right."

McCain ends with a call to the students to be active in this year's campaign, be it his or some other candidate, and to consider running for public office some day.

He gets something of a standing ovation. After the cameras stop rolling, McCain sticks around for a few more questions, and I sneak into the stage area.

Cillizza notes that in the instant poll responses, MySpace users came in "skeptical" and warmed throughout the program. "He has said that his campaign is not about him, but about the call to service, and that's a powerful message."

McCain is asked how he thinks he did. "Brilliantly." McCain takes another question on outsourcing, and says that he can't make the jobs come back in a global economy. He says he would focus and improve job training and reeducation, declaring current federal programs to be "complete failures."

I notice two big guys in suits, each with a "MCCAIN" pin on their lapel. "We need to clear this area," one says to the other, starting to shoo the assembled journalists towards the sides. Later, I notice that these two guys and one guy in a suit are the first to start applauding when McCain reaches an appropriate moment. Were these guys triggering the applause all night long? I'm sure it's standard procedure for most campaigns, but it's interesting to watch a bunch of the campaign guys applaud their boss, and then see their applause spread into the crowd.

Final thought... I have a hard time imagining any other Republican candidate working that room as well as McCain just did. Maybe Huckabee. McCain knows that when politicians try to be "hip" it usually comes across painfully awkward; so instead he openly mocks himself: "My musical tastes ended with the Beatles and Abba."

I would note that one of his jokes completely few over the heads of the audience, when he was asked about having a Democrat like Hillary Clinton as his running mate. He used one of his older lines, that one of the vice president's primary duties is "to inquire as to the health of the president on a daily basis." Only one or two of us laughed in the press section.

* See disclosure of MySpace's covering the expenses of this New Hampshire trip here.

12/03 07:58 PMShare