Keeping John Kerry Safe from Sticks

I got to shake Kerry's hand at a huge rally of around 20,000, located of all places, at the Tacoma Dome parking lot. An energetic and exciting deal, - I immediately went out and registered the random kid I bought my burrito from. (I cannot recommend keeping a couple of registration forms with you enough - I've signed up about six people in the last couple of weeks. It feels great, they appreciate it, and you can more or less multiply your vote legally.)

Excellent speech, much more full of fire than he was in March, when he was compelling but visibly worn. Kerry was the best fighter available for this election, I'm even more convinced. He is both intelligent, competitive and extremely tough, a real heavyweight, rope-a-dope candidate. He understands the stakes, and his political skills keep improving. Clark and Dean, bless him, would have snapped in two by now. Lieberman and Gephardt would have long been outflanked on all sides, and, I think, started fading fast months ago as they tried with less appeal to out-Bush Bush. It's taken a despicable, all-out Nixonesque assault to get Kerry back to dead even.

"I'm in a fighting mood, " he said, an excellent sign, if slow in coming. It also suggests his action movie catch phrase, and reflecting on his actual war heroism, it's something of a reason to duck. I have to say there was not a whiff of Dukakisness. "Everything that matters to you is on the line." said, I felt, with real conviction. The angrier he gets, the more compelling he is. Someone need to keep putting ants in his shorts.

I can confirm that he is on top of providing health care - he had to call for EMTs at least six different times as several Olympia residents withered and fainted in 12 minutes of sun and sweltering 71 degree temperatures in a pleasant breeze. It was brutal.

He was introduced by Garrison Keillor (!) ("John Kerry is the kind of guy who speaks in complete sentences, which lead to coherent paragraphs, which contain things like meaning and information...") and Wesley Clark, who was yelling like America's hair was on fire, which it is: "Bush is an incompetent and indecisive commander in chief."

Now to the moment in question. The Secret Service is as always a great source of entertainment: first, the suit cuts through, politely enough, then the totally unconvincing and completely obvious "normally" dressed agent, with jeans and a grey fleece vest (a dead giveaway in AUGUST), looking like nothing so much as a Green Beret sergeant shopping with his 11 year old daughter at REI.

Then the agents come down the receiving line, with a statement so odd I had trouble understanding it, agents pointing at Flags and pens and saying "no sticks, put the sticks away, no sticks, no pens, that stick, put it back..," which was related to the VERY REAL FEAR THAT SOMEONE WAS GOING TO POKE JOHN KERRY WITH A STICK!

Then the very tall John Kerry, who was really working the crowd well, coming my way, rather unexpectedly, quite relaxed and friendly, to the random cries of "is that his hair? which was all most people could see. A line of four agents, including a very, very short agent, whose job appeared to be to energetically scan the crowd at hand level. Sort of a human terrier.

You know, you try to be cool. What to tell our next - Allah willing - president? Stop illegal coltan mining in the Congo? Reverse the Patriot Act? You're Very Tall? Save our democracy in mortal peril? Fuck up Bush's Shit, Holmes? Please don't let the Planet Earth shrivel up into a small wrinkled gray ball of hot discarded plastic and bones? O tempore! O mores!?

A big guy, a genuine smile. (Thousands and thousands of faces to greet -I honestly cannot imagine the amount of energy running for president must take. )

Then a solid, long-fingered grip -

"Right On, Senator!"

"Thank You!"

I suppose part of my brain put together a certain equation. Kerry was a 1960's guy in spades, a vet, a guitarist in a preppy band, the very definition of the now athletic and successful, laboriously reformed political goof. Brain said "Inner Kerry wanted to be cool in 1967. Groovy..uh no. Right on."

Right on, man.