A
few days later, on August 9, 2008, I got an angry reply from the wife
of the UNH professor who introduced McCain on the 21st. I was
flattered.
Commentary by Timothy Horrigan; August 5, 2008
This is a letter I wrote on July 25, 2008 in response to a July 24 editorial by my local paper, The Dover (NH) Foster's Daily Democrat. You can get a pretty good idea of what the editorial said just from my letter: they were praising John McCain's July 22 speech in Rochester, NH. The original URL (subject to decay over time) for the editorial was
I was at the speech and had a very different impression of it than the Foster's editorial board. I didn't even agree with their crowed estimate: they claimed there were 700 in the Rochester Opera House and an overflowing throng outside. I estimated about 500 in the hall and it looked to me like everyone who wanted to go inside could go inside. There were a few empty seats, actually. (In spite of the size of the crowd, which was shockingly small for a major-party Presidential nominee: it was effective political theatre. The visuals, featuring a beautiful little auditorium and a honking huge flag backdrop, were great and he got a few sound bites on the news.)
I wrote about the speech at some length on DailyKos and also on this web site. The original URL for the Foster's letter, which appeared on Saturday, August 2, was:
Little straight talk from McCain
To
the editor: Your editorial writer began his or her July 24 editorial
by exclaiming, "The Straight Talk express rolled into Rochester
and 700 or more people were there to greet John McCain and cheer them
on."
The crowd was not that large, it was vastly smaller
than the crowds attracted by Barack Obama, and not all of us were
there to cheer him on. Even his supporters were rather lukewarm in
their enthusiasm.
Neither of our state's Republican U.S.
Senators showed up, and Sen. Sununu, who is up for re-election,
didn't even bother to send campaign workers to the event.
We
heard very little straight talk from Sen. McCain. He made rather
vicious comments about Sen. Obama which would have gotten him gaveled
out of order if he said them during Senate proceedings, his command
of the facts was shaky at best, and he said many things which simply
aren't true, e.g., that we are winning the war.
Although he
took some pains to distance himself from Bush and Cheney, he was
talking straight, however, when he affirmed his commitment to
maintaining their permanent war in Iraq. He won't send our troops
home until we achieve quote-unquote "Victory" but he
refuses to say what it is he is trying to win by keeping them
there.
There evidently will be no "Victory" declared
while President McCain is our commander in chief.
Oddly, the
McCain campaign made calls to Democrats and undeclared voters in
advance of the event, and the event was hosted by a group (not a very
prominent one) called "Democrats for McCain." Even though I
am a staunch Democrat who is in fact running for the state
Legislature, I was called and invited by a paid telemarketer working
for McCain's national campaign headquarters.
Another
surprisingly invited guest was Barbara Hilton, the prominent local
peace activist who had a 10-minute-long dialogue about the war, in a
dramatic incident which attracted worldwide attention even though it
evidently escaped your reporters' and editors' notice. (She, by the
way, recently left the Democratic Party in frustration over its
refusal to hold President Bush and Vice President Cheney accountable
for their war crimes.)
Timothy Horrigan
Durham
See Also:
August 2, 2008 Dover, NH Foster's Daily Democrat Letters to the Editor page
July 23. 2008 Dover, NH Foster's Daily Democrat story (contains some glaring inaccuracies)
Senator McCain's July 23, 2008 Manchester Union Leader op-ed (also contains some glaring inaccuracies)
HR 24: NH State House of Representatives bill to impeach President Bush (which didn't pass)
A
few days later, on August 9, 2008, I got an angry reply from the wife
of the UNH professor who introduced McCain on the 21st. I was
flattered.
I stand by my audience-size estimate (which was about 500.) I have met Captain Scott Dumas of the Rochester Police Dept., and he is a good cop— but his estimate of 700 in the hall plus an overflow throng of 300 out front is hard to believe given the fact that there were numerous empty seats and given the fact that the official capacity of the hall is 600. In any case, even 1000 is not an impressive crowd for a major party nominee. And many of those who might have been hanging around outside the hall must have been picketers and media personnel who didn't even want to go inside.
Original URL for August 9 Letters to the Editor (subject to link rot as time goes by):
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