S. and I went to Obama's town hall meeting in Raleigh tonight. S. was amazing and waited in line for an hour yesterday to get us the tickets. We arrived separately, I got there first and wasn't allowed to save a seat for her. But then she got there just in time to be seated on the bleachers near the big flag, and luckily I was able to join her there. We were farther away than my first seat, but since we were elevated a bit it was much easier to see. I think if I had stayed at the first seat, I would have spent the entire town hall staring at the backs of people's heads and feeling frustrated.
The configuration of the audience was a bit of a surprise. Most of the audience was on two sides of the hall, and the press were on the other two sides, with a small number of VIP spectators sitting in front of them (the cameras were on a platform so the VIPs didn't block their view). I guess they do it that way so that Obama can be filmed with a lot of people behind him. But it means that he had his back to about half of the audience whenever he faced the cameras. He did walk around a lot so as to face all directions. Still it was kind of odd to see him turn towards the cameras, away from us, and continue gesturing and talking to an audience that wasn't there. I guess I only found it odd because I'd never seen a live stump speech before.
Obama connected with the audience immediately -- of course it was a sympathetic audience, but still it seemed like he hit just the right note many times. He was serious at times, inspired many cheers and standing ovations, and funny other times: like once he sneezed, then joked about having caught a cold from his daughter's friends because seven-year-olds "have a lot of germs" and therefore we should all wash our hands after shaking hands with him.
He gave a speech first, and then answered audience questions. We were both very surprised that the "town hall" format meant apparently random people raising their hands and being called on to ask whatever question they wanted. Some of the questions were silly, some very relevant, and none of them appeared to have been pre-vetted. I'm so used to the Bush administration approach, where every interaction is carefully stage-managed, that it was a big change to see a major political figure answering random questions. (I could be wrong about this of course, it's possible that the whole thing was staged. But I think if so, they would have chosen the questions more carefully to lead into Obama's talking points. A few of these questions were really off the wall and just sounded so unscripted.) I suspect the last question may have been an exception: the question, from a homeless veteran, was just so perfect that it made me wonder. I'm sure the guy is completely sincere; I just wouldn't be surprised if staffers had heard his story in advance and decided that he'd be a good way to end the town hall.
The hall, and the line to get in, were swarming with volunteers asking people to register to vote or to sign up as volunteers. And I must say, if I weren't already volunteering I would have signed up today. The meeting left both S. and I feeling fired up and ready to get back to work. We were so enthused that we didn't realize how hungry we were until we got back to the car after the speech was over. We stopped for a great dinner at Tyler's on the way home. And then I got home and found out that Spencer had called me about phone banking again! Just in time to take advantage of my excitement about volunteering. I'm glad he called because I need to find out the events we're promoting this week. But in general I'd rather do email than phone calls, because I can save the email messages as reminders of what I've signed up to do. He seems like a phone guy though, so I may not be able to convince him to email me instead.
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