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On the Road, Again
Friday, February 18, 2000
From: Charleston, South Carolina
Aboard the Bush Press bus and plane
First the plane. It is a 727 with a Miami Air logo on the fuselage. I'm not suggesting it is old, but one reporter said "It feels like it wants to go home to Kitty Hawk."
Governor Bush and the staff sit in first class. Reporters sit in coach. Tour regulars have marked their territory with business cards taped to the seatback in front of them. Newbies, like Mullings, have to scramble for a position and beg permission to sit.
I was amused by the number of very well known reporters on the plane who were not only sitting in coach, but in middle seats. Hahahahahahahahaha. Oh, I had a middle seat, too.
I wondered aloud what would happen if someone from the back drifted up to the front. "There are people with guns," I was told in that superior tone that people in aisle seats use to address people who are sitting in a middle seat.
Both campaigns are spinning so fast they make quasars look like they are stationary in space. (Sounds like a verse from "Windmills of your Mind")
The McCain campaign feels pretty good about things in South Carolina. They say that if Bush, after being the prohibitive favorite, and after two weeks of overwhelming levels advertising, is still in a dead-heat it augers well for McCain.
The Bush people think that, coming off their win in Delaware and the level of energy the campaign is demonstrating, they are in good shape.
At around noon time the press was sent into the gym at Coastal Carolina University in Conway for what is called "filing time." Reporters sit across from each other at long picnic tables strewn with phones and power jacks. It is a cross between high school detention and a Knights of Columbus pot luck dinner.
Judy Keen, of USA Today, informed us that she would not be at the filing center immediately as she was meeting some relatives first. She described it as an "in-law-op."
On the schedule for this morning is a taping by George W of a program called: "Carolina Gang." Now, if I were, say, a New Yorker, and I had not been blessed with years of close contact with southerners, I would worry about attending anything which included the two words: "Carolina" and "Gang." I didn't have the list of participants but I suspect someone named "Buford" will be involved. Safe bet, here.
At a press conference yesterday Andy Hiller, the reporter who did that pop foreign affairs quiz with Bush last fall, asked whether Bush was "going to spend tax money the way you are spending campaign money?" Bush responded, "I'm going to give people their [tax] money back. Nice to see you again, Andy."
A story ran today that Al "Pander Bear" Gore is meeting with the AFL-CIO regarding trade with China. Union officials said they had received "private assurances" from Gore on policy changes he would make.
Is it legal for a sitting Vice President to give "private assurances" to a group which has made, and will continue to make, huge donations to his campaign on a matter as important to the US economy as China trade policy?
What if George W or John S had met with, say, the CEOs of the major pharmaceutical companies and given them "private assurances" about changes he would make in patent life regulations.
Janet Reno wouldn't be able to open an investigation fast enough.
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