It was 1 a.m. and I was in an airplane hangar, having a Budweiser with a college kid who goes by the name of Deejay Big Worm. He was wearing a “McCAIN2000.COM” poster wrapped about his noggin like a 2-foot-high chef’s hat.
Party down. And welcome to the most distinctive presidential campaign, replete with the McCain Motel on wheels and its loyal guests, a cadre of journalists who have gained the unprecedented status of POA’s–prisoners of access.
A 727, carrying Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and entourage from his unforeseen New Hampshire primary thrashing of former President George Bush’s “boy,” Texas Gov. George W. Bush, was in the air. On the ground, Deejay Big Worm was among hundreds of testosterone-filled male as well as perky female undergrads rocking at a mixer staged to greet the arrival of the conquering hero.
Most had been bused in by the McCain campaign to this bleak and drafty hole, which could be mistaken for a Bulgarian nightclub. The lure was free beer, pizza and rousing music by a fine Charleston band, Blue Dogs, in exchange for serving as placard- and pompom-waving props when the victor finally showed up at 2:45 a.m. to begin his next primary quest, in South Carolina.
“I got a 10 a.m. finance class, but I’ll make it,” said Kevin Nolan, a senior at Presbyterian College. His nom de radio station is Deejay Big Worm and he swore that his motives went beyond free beer and cruising for babes in a locale with all the charm of a, well, airplane hangar.
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“I like the way the guy (McCain) stuck it out in Vietnam,” said Nolan, a senior who may or may not know where Vietnam actually is. “The other guy (Bush) is like a robot with money.”
As Nolan held a plastic beer cup with the same practiced nonchalance Tiger Woods exhibits with a pitching wedge, I was subconsciously thrust back to a disastrous year in a college fraternity decades earlier. I asked Nolan to enlighten me (hell, McCain was nearly two hours away and there was no TV around) with socio-cultural analysis of the surrounding females, based on their schools of origin.
“Yeah, we’ve got a lot of high-class, good-looking women from Clemson, Furman, Presbyterian, the University of South Carolina/Spartanburg and Converse College,” he said.
When I pointed at a nearby clique, he said without hesitation, “Converse College,” which is women-only and rather conservative. “Nerdy-looking but they do like to party.”
Deejay Big Worm graciously bid adieu and headed back to the monster kegs, where the crowd was substantial. I hoped that a McCain administration keeps track of our nuclear codes with more attentiveness than they appeared to have carded some of young’uns at this affair.
Of course, there were some who were actually intrigued by McCain, whose stellar South Carolina operation even offers undergrads a free calling card to get themselves an absentee ballot for the Feb. 19 primary. The exhibited their spasms of political interest despite apparent peer inertia.
“Some girls were laughing at me the other night when I was watching one of the debates on TV,” said Avery Houser, 18, a freshman at Clemson University.
By 1:30 a.m., my professional inquisitiveness was nearly exhausted as the Blue Dogs took a break. But I perked up upon hearing an ear-shattering “The Way You do the Things You Do” by the Temptations and spying several kids lip-synching the words.
I was briefly consumed by cross-generational fervor, considered dropping the big-shot Washington bureau chief air and asking some 17-year-old to dance. But, well, my back was hurting a bit and, ah, you know, there would be the appearance of it all. I opted for a voyeur’s perch atop a photographers’ platform and quietly sang along with the next Temptations offering, “My Girl.”
It was a few minutes later when a Furman junior, who watches too much Washington-based cable TV, introduced himself to me and expressed his dismay with all around him.
“It is horrific to base an event like this around the consumption of alcohol,” he said, claiming he personally knew of 20 underage drinkers there. “I’m a social conservative and I don’t think offering free beer to kids upholds the supposed values of this campaign.”
I was going to tell him to chill out, though obviously not with a Budweiser, but his sincerity deserved a more decorous, non-committal stance.
Well, McCain finally showed and, with the flair of a Busby Berkeley flick, aides got him off the plane and into his beloved “Straight Talk Express” bus. The bus was melodramatically driven into the hangar, right by a stage soon festooned with hail-to-the-victor confetti and pompoms, amid a retina-wearying light show and an up-tempo techno-rock offering often heard during player introductions at pro basketball games.
This was clearly a high point of McCain’s long-shot campaign. “We should have all our rallies at 3 in the morning,” he declared with the widest of grins, then giving a thankfully brief version of his stump speech.
His presidency would dilute the power of the special interests in Washington “and give it back to you!” he told the roughly 250 kids remaining.
Before he does that, I thought to myself, he had better bring in the Clydesdales.
Tapped out, I was soon fast asleep.
Straight out of a media-warped age
Refreshed after 2 1/2 hours of rest, I found myself on the Straight Talk Express, once again a player in a wonderfully adroit campaign gambit.
If you haven’t seen the many stories about it, McCain rides around in this customized bus, intentionally surrounded by eight or nine reporters who can cram around him in the back.
As veteran political journalists will attest, getting to candidates, especially when they are hot and attracting hordes of reporters, can be difficult. They are protected by well-intentioned flunkies, with even the most benign question often precipitating a, “We’ll get back to you,” and, if you’re lucky, some mushy response 10 hours later unless you’re The New York Times, in which case you get it in five hours.
Between stops, which in this state can be an hour or more, McCain serves up what amounts to a rolling press conference and “Truman Show” all in one, answering any question, with a mix of candor and occasional indiscretion (especially when he dumps on Senate colleagues like Majority Leader Trent Lott).
Meanwhile, his wife, Cindy, is up front, occasionally on the phone to their four kids back in Phoenix. Life here can be an open book.
Ah, but if you’re a reporter . . .
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Nothing is out of bounds. Last week, I heard McCain discourse on a hilariously eclectic range of topics including nuclear submarines, abortion, radio’s Don Imus, the impact of TV on foreign policy, political scandal in Germany and the creaky tenure of Illinois Gov. George Ryan, whom McCain senses is in a deep hole.
Late Thursday afternoon, I was in the back, a POA during an hourlong drive up the coast from sublime Charleston to Georgetown. Scrunched next to me was Marc Lacey, a reporter for The New York Times, whose cell phone rang.
It was an editor back at the ranch, to inform him that Bush supporter and New York Gov. George Pataki had done an about-face on a ballot access dispute important to McCain in next month’s New York primary. Could the reporter get some comment from “the McCain campaign?”
At about that very moment, New York Post reporter Deborah Orin’s cell phone also rang on the same matter. Lacey killed two birds with one stone: He informed McCain, who was sitting 2 feet away, of the news, then got reaction from the McCain campaign, namely McCain. The Big Apple’s broadsheet and tabloid constituencies were thus quickly serviced.
In the front of the bus, CNN reporter Jonathan Karl was phoning in the news and response. But he was doing it live, on the air, while people in the bus were watching a TV, with Karl live on CNN, phoning in McCain’s response.
Rarely has the media echo chamber been operating quite so furiously as on the Straight Talk Express.