Who Is John McCain? And why did he come to Albuquerque?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

John McCain dropped by the ballroom of the University of New Mexico's Student Union Building yesterday where he - according to various news reports - spent most of his speech attacking Barak Obama. I wasn't, however, on the invite list so can't give you a firsthand report.

According to the local media, including The Lobo, UNM's student newspaper, the McCain event drew about 1,000 attendees plus several hundred noisy demonstrators whose heckling could be heard inside the ballroom itself. The tickets, I assume, were carefully guarded and distributed by the Republican powers that be in the state. Oh, well.

Now it was gutsy of the McCain camp to stage this designed-for-the-national-media-nearly-local-stealth-invite-event in UNM's Student Union Building right in the center of the campus. The state's flagship and largest university - after all - is not normally the bastion of Republicanism although I remember a lively student Republican club in previous years.

I've been told that the campus Obama Campaign is large, very active and - as is the case with the Obama campaign operation elsewhere in town - highly organized. I've also been told that, in contrast to the energized and disciplined Obama folks as well as considerable Republican presence in the past, the campus Republicans this year have been almost invisible.

It was interesting that The Albuquerque Journal - our local conservative but subscription only access rag - mentioned that several hundred anti-McCain demonstrators surrounded the building. This newspaper all too often failed to report the large local anti-Bush, anti-Iraq invasion demonstrations in 2003. The Lobo placed the number of demonstrators yesterday at 250 - a number I assume the reporter got from campus security. If so, this count would probably be more accurate than the several hundred referred to in the Journal and elsewhere.

If it's Monday, it must be . . . where?

The most perceptive report of the event, however, included what didn't happen inside - as opposed to only what did. This was in the article in The New Mexican, the Democratic leaning paper based in Santa Fe. In contrast to The New Mexican, the reports in the The Albuquerque Journal and The Lobo featured sound-bites of McCain's latest anti-Obama diatribe followed by quicky after-event interviews with a few McCain supporters - or leaning McCain supporters who had been present at the happening and liked what they had heard. So Rove's "smear and fear" tactics must be having some - at least short term - effect on attendees. But neither paper reported what McCain didn't say that if he had would have been music to New Mexican ears.

Short shrift to New Mexicans

Not only did McCain give New Mexico and New Mexicans short shrift, but more surprisingly, he apparently never once mentioned its four Republican candidates running for the US Senate and Congress. He also gave only a quick tribute to retiring senior Senator and Republican stalwart Pete Domenici who was also there. Among the missing in McCain's acknowledgments was Republican candidate Senatorial candidate Steve Pearce who reportedly was in the audience. Kind of like New Mexico Republican politicians had become the proverbial invisible men - and that New Mexico's five electoral votes really didn't matter in the overall scheme of things.

Could it be possible, John McCain didn't know where he was? It does happen to overtaxed, over-traveled candidates particularly in the heat of the campaign season.

Yet one has to question why McCain even came to northern New Mexico - if what he only really wanted was an indoor stage set to show off his wife's latest glitzy outfit and launch his nation-wide vicious, personal attacks campaign against his opponent. Apparently, this "taking the gloves off" approach - or one might also argue yet another last ditch attempt to change the direction of the numbers on the score board - was launched yesterday right here in this city on the middle Rio Grande. Unfortunately, the American voter and the rest of the world will be subjected to this line of attack over and over and over again until election day.

Had, of course, the McCain speech been held outside - as was the rally I attended on campus for Al Gore in 2000 - McCain could have had the Sandia mountains as his spectacular backdrop. But then northern New Mexicans - especially students - really liked Vice President Gore and especially his environmental message. Meanwhile, I suppose this kind of an open setting was not seriously considered for John McCain for all sorts of reasons.

PS: Check out the comments that follow the articles in The New Mexican and The Lobo as well as the articles themselves. I would have also referred you to comments following The Albuquerque Journal report if I could have but the paper didn't permit them. Wonder why.

Comments

[J.]

That is weird that McCain would go to New Mexico. I would have thought he would be going to Colorado and Nevada to shore up the Repub votes there - they seem to be much more on the line as weak Republican-leaning states. Oh well. Let's hope he wastes more time and money in blue-tinged states.