In the crowd

So yesterday I found myself at the Harper Rally in Buckingham, Quebec, surrounded by a few hundred Conservatives chanting, "Harper! Harper!" (though at first I thought it was "Badger! Badger!" -- yes, really!) I was a little uncomfortable there. Though I want the Conservatives to win and am working to that end, I'm not enthusiastic enough about their policies to abandon myself to the crowd and yell myself hoarse. But it was fun to see the workings of a national campaign up close and not through the narrow eye of the media.

The stage from which Harper would be speaking had been moved forward from the wall to make the room about 1/3 smaller. It's very important to make it look like there's a big crowd for the cameras. They needn't have bothered though; the place was packed and a bit more room would have been useful. In front of the stage and about halfway to the back was the media stage where the cameramen set up to capture their short clip for the evening news.

Who are these young people in the blue shirts? Where do they come from? Is there a bus full of them that go to all of these events, or do they find new ones at each stop? They made the rounds handing out stickers and signs for people to wave around. No sign for me, thanks.

I spotted various national media types wandering about. Mike Duffy was talking with CFRA's Michael Harris against the wall. On the other side was Terry Milewski chatting with a cameraman. And Rick Mercer wormed his way through the crowd talking to a camera.

Lawrence Cannon, whose campaign I'm working on, opened up the show with quite a rousing speech. I've been exposed to a lot of political rhetoric in the past few weeks and have come to the conclusion that speaking in public is much harder than it looks. But Cannon really has the stuff. I'm genuinely impressed by him.

And then Harper arrived. He made his way to the stage through a path that was taped off before he arrived. I took a few pictures, but mostly just got the back of people's heads. I tried to get a handshake from him, but he snubbed me for the more telegenic old folks on the other side of the path. On the spot, I decided to vote NDP.

He gave a pretty good speech. My wife says his voice sounds just like Stuart McLean from CBC's Vinyl Café, and she's right. He aimed a few zingers at Martin, commented on the car bomb in Afghanistan, and listed off the five main goals of a Conservative government. It all sounded pretty good, but he wasn't getting my vote.

And then he was finished. The cameramen had already started packing up while he was still speaking, and now were moving towards the door. The blue kids were leading the chanting again, and Harper tried to make his escape. As he approached me, he offered his hand to me, probably recognizing how badly he had treated me, and hoping to make amends. I'm not one to bear a grudge, so I shook it and decided to maybe give him one last chance. It's a big hand and kind of soft, but he gives a pretty firm handshake for someone that's giving handshakes all day. And after having won back my vote, he left.

As the crowd evaporated, I was introduced to Mike Duffy and Michael Harris by one of the other workers on the Cannon campaign. I got to hear Duffy tell the complete anecdote about how he put John Duffy in his place. He said John actually stood over him, pushed down on his shoulders and put his face within inches of Mike's and commanded Mike to not bring up the 'Soldiers in our streets' ad. If you ask me, John Duffy got off easy in the on-air drubbing Mike gave him.

As I left the building, I saw the three Conservative buses start to pull away for their next gig. They all had Alberta licence plates.

Posted by Bruce Gottfred at January 16, 2006 03:21 PM | TrackBack