Tick Tock
Monday, February 28, 2000
At 3:15 yesterday afternoon, I got on the Mullcycle (pronounced as in bicycle, not motorcycle) and pedaled the mile and change to the McCain headquarters at the corner of St. Asaph's and Madison in Alexandria, Virginia for a rally Senator McCain was scheduled to hold at about 5:00 pm.
It was misting as I locked my bike to a tree outside the front door. There were, perhaps, fifty people there. More were arriving. By 3:35 that number had quadrupled. The staging was being finished, the music was already blaring from loudspeakers.
At 3:40 the two catering companies were in full operation. The barbeque caterer had made arrangements to feed 350 people. The hot dog caterer, 600. The mist had become a drizzle. Well before the end of the rally the barbeque, which was free, had sold out.
People were arriving with their dogs. There was no snarling. In Alexandria there is a place called the Old Towne School for Dogs. Dogs in Alexandria are better behaved than many of the people who own them.
At 3:47 the drizzle turned to rain. People arrived with their umbrellas covering the babies in their strollers.
At 3:53 the parking lot of the Royal Restaurant, around the corner, filled up with cars. The Royal closes at 2:30 on Sundays. People arrived dressed in blazers and slacks; and in jeans and leather jackets.
Alexandria, Virginia sits immediately south of Your Nation's Capital. It is not unusual to be at dinner seated next to a Senator, or a Congressman, or a senior government official. It is not a town which is easily impressed by celebrities. People arrived in rain gear and in workout clothes.
At 4:32 the cloud cover lifted. It wasn't as if the sun had come out like some magical foreshadowing of Tuesday's result, but the sky got lighter and the rain stopped.
At 4:45 so many people had arrived, the crowd spilled out into the intersection. Police stationed themselves so traffic could pass one car at a time - like a one-lane bridge.
People arrived having walked several blocks from where they had to park their cars.
Alexandria is sometimes known as the "People's Republic of Alexandria." There has not been a Republican member of the Alexandria City Council since King George III's ne'er-do-well second cousin won a Royal appointment prior to the Revolutionary War.
At 4:54, to accommodate the additional people who had arrived, police blocked the streets in all four directions and forced all traffic to detour around the rally site.
At 4:58 the "Straight Talk Express" pulled up to the cheers of the 2,000-or-so people who had arrived to greet it.
People were on the sidewalks, in the streets, on buildings, looking from the balconies of nearby apartment buildings, there were even kids in trees. They could have arrived at a political event a hundred years earlier and they would have picked the same spots from which to watch.
At 5:02 McCain began to speak. About ten minutes into his remarks he said, "To quote from a famous movie, I say to the [Virginia Governor James] Gilmore - [Virginia Senator John] Warner machine: 'Hasta la vista, baby!'" The crowd, almost all wearing McCain stickers, many wearing McCain t-shirts, roared its approval.
In the next minute, McCain said "I am a Reagan Republican!" There was a much more subdued reaction. This crowd, which had arrived on a rainy Sunday afternoon to see John McCain, was not of the straight-ticket variety.
At 5:27 McCain finished speaking. I unlocked the Mullcycle and rode home. Impressed.
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