First things first, my many thanks to Mark Block, Fred Dooley, Erik Telford, and Americans for Prosperity for this opportunity. I can now tick off a couple more items on my “must do” list. Now that I’ve done that, and gathered as much reax as I could find, it’s time to try to put my thoughts in some semblance of order, and take the long view.
It is a big shame that Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson didn’t make themselves available to the bloggers and the press, and not just because we never got sound up on Bloggers’/Press Row. I wanted to see those two, especially Thompson, operate outside the safety net of a prepared speech and expected questions. To a lesser extent, I have the same complaint about Mitt Romney, though by that time, all the “real” media and almost all the bloggers had departed the Row. While Steve (no, NOT me), Fred and Leslie would’ve put up good questions, I know I wouldn’t have. While John McCain also was not available to the bloggers/media, that was more of a question of logistics (there was no place for Bloggers’/Media Row in the Hart Building).
Speaking of those questions, while the press dominated the Q&As with Ron Paul, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee, the bloggers brave enough to ask questions (see above) did come up with some land mines. Paul definitely detonated one with Fred’s question (the 9th and last one).
The biggest limitation was that lack of audio up in Bloggers’ Row. Part of it was the fact that we had radio shows broadcasting live from the room all day (that’s the source of all the extraneous noise on my audio from Paul, Brownback and Huckabee), though it was never fixed or fixable. About the time I would catch up on blogging, I found myself too late for the afternoon session going on at that point. I made it worse by perpetuating the vicious cycle because the Wi-Fi didn’t make it all the way up to the room and the Mayflower charges an arm and a leg for wired access.
I mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again; if anybody has extended audio/video from the main hall or the afternoon sessions (yes, I know all about the Defending the Dream YouTube channel), I would like it.
Enough gripes; on to the candidates. Giuliani does indeed know his audience, and knows how to destroy the clock (I’ll get back to that). Paul is a 69-percenter (and that’s on the college 70%-to-pass scale); there’s a lot that I can relate to, yet the big negatives are completely insurmountable. Brownback doesn’t quite light my fire, though his prop of choice was great. Huckabee doesn’t know the first thing about federalism, and he’s too wedded to a national sales tax. Thompson would be a runaway in an earlier time (say, 1988 or perhaps as late as 1992), but he has some baggage. If I could ignore Romney’s past (especially on health care), I could warm up to him; unfortunately, I can’t.
On to the BIG controversy, at least for the Paul-nuts – the “silencing” of their man. That’s one of the reasons why I want the extended audio/video; I want to accurately time how long everybody got. I do know that all of the candidates ran over, and that Giuliani, who went first, went over the longest.
Mitigating that is the fact that the “minor” 3 all spent time with us bloggers and the media, while the “big” 4 (including McCain) did not. Even before one adds in the 3 stations that Paul did interviews on, he got better than 20 minutes of microphone time. I wish I had been better with the mike, but I’m still learning with that new piece of equipment as I picked it up earlier in the week and didn’t have a chance to find out its limitations.
Even with the problems in Bloggers’ Row, that was a blast. I got to meet a bunch of great people, some all-too-briefly, see some pros at work (no, I’m not talking about the press in the center of the room), and find out how at least some of the candidates handle less-than-scripted questions. If I weren’t so quiet,….
Other than missing the “working” sessions (note to self; pay for the ‘Net in the room next time so you don’t burn the “working” sessions catching up on blogging), it was simply an awesome time. Fred and I even got in some sightseeing on a foggy Saturday. Saturday, though he headed back to the hotel early. I will say that 1 hour in the Air and Space Museum is not nearly enough. Those pics will be up tomorrow.
