John McCain is visiting Milford, NH this upcoming Saturday morning, and I have made plans to attend one of these now imfamously incorrectly-named "town hall meetings" at an elementary school. I'm prepared for an experience entirely different from that of meeting Mike Huckabee at a restaurant in Manchester this February in which getting face-to-face time with the candidate simply invovled waiting ten or fifteen minutes after the speech before it was your turn to say some words.
Like the rest of the frontrunners in this 2008 scramble, McCain will undoubtedly be swamped by an army of reporters, and I am curious to see to which level, if any, the personality of such an event declines under these circumstances.
From a candidate such as Huckabee, I was not looking so much for creative agendas and practical solutions for the problems that this nation faces, but instead for a capable and inspiring leader whose personality and vision for the future could justify my thinking of him as a serious candidate. McCain, however, has been one of the biggest figures in American politics in past years, and my expctations are sky-high.
A quick visit to McCain's website worried me, but still leaves me curious to see what he can pull off on saturday. A video hosted on the campaign website entitled "Iraq" speaks of nothing more than of the importance of winning the conflict and why we cannot afford to lose. From such an experienced politician I count on McCain for being able to give voters more of an answer than that. If this way of skirting an issue and coughing up a patriotic answer to such an important problem is the way that McCain likes to do things, than I'm sure this town hall meeting won't be very enjoyable. I hope I'm wrong.
Ps. Depending on your notes isn't a big plus for me either. Huckabee went for nearly half an hour without any script at all, and he covered everything from weight loss to terrorism...I guess it pays to have twelve years of ministry experience under your belt before getting involved in politics after all...
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