Unlike Brian, I don’t have any deep thoughts about the meaning of the Republican convention.
What I do have are impressions. It was a busy place, even on wash out Monday. There were no quiet places to gather one’s thoughts, let alone make a phone call. There weren’t nearly enough electrical outlets to keep everyone’s cool tools running and, had I been truly mercenary, I could have made a small fortune renting out my Blackberry charger. The media center had multiple wireless options, but they all ran perilously slow. Even the hard-line internet connections in the Google war room had hiccups. Our problems were only mostly resolved when our host, the Talk Radio News Service, brought its own IT guy in to re-jigger its portion of the system.
It was possible to eat and drink each day without spending a dime of one’s own money (and thanks, Brian, for the dinner Tuesday night). The right invitation or pass would have landed you knee-deep in finger food and booze. Without them, though, it was a bit of a challenge. One night, Brian and I were trolling the Forum looking for dinner. After a dizzying turn through the building, we came across a quiet oasis of tables, food and drinks, courtesy of Outback Steakhouse. We asked how to get in the guy we spoke to said “you need one of these” — a laminated pass. He offered to sell it to us for $100. Sorry pal, bloomin’ onions aren’t worth a tenth of that under any circumstance.
But it wasn’t all bandwidth shortages and ticket scalping. I had an extremely generous offer from a Bearing Drift reader to bunk with him in Clearwater at the hotel housing the Virginia delegation. I seriously considered it, too, as my own hotel room quickly became a comedy of indifferent plumbing and a flooding AC unit (there’s nothing like walking into your room late at night and squishing across the carpet). But a politely made complaint got me into a suite with two bathrooms that worked, a dry floor, and a free, 15 minute shuttle ride to within easy walking distance of the Forum. It wasn’t paradise, but it quickly became routine.
That is the operative word of the convention: “routine.” Stick to some sort of schedule, and things tend to work. The free coffee on radio row is there until 10 AM. Get there before 8, and you might score a muffin, too. From 12-7 or 8 or 9 each day, man the booth on radio row and watch the clouds of grey- and blue-suited pols wander by, some with just staffers, some with staffers — generally young, female and poured into their dresses — plus hangers-on, camera crews and not a few delegates in tow. Pay special attention around 1, because that’s when Michele Bachmann’s entourage will be winging through and the gravity generated by that mass of bodies, equipment and ego will latch onto the atoms of your soul.
It was only slightly less dangerous when Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Jon Voight or, weirdly, Chuck Woolery breezed by. And keep a safe distance from Geraldo Rivera at all times of day. Though a small man, as I discovered most pressies are, he was everywhere, mic and camera crew at the ready, waylaying just about every form of matter that came within his range.
I managed to line-up a number of guests before heading down to Tampa, and so avoided most of the scrums that erupted over getting this or that person for a few precious minutes of airtime. Fighting for a five-minute interview with Orrin Hatch? Really? I learned more and had more fun talking shop with Pete Snyder for half an hour than an army of Orrins could deliver in a lifetime.
That’s not to say I wasn’t pitched on a number of other guests. Those requests came fast and furious. Some were quite good and knowledgeable. Others were out of their tiny little minds. But the real fun was talking with folks before rolling the tape. I picked up more off the record statements, gossip, innuendo, asides, theories and whatnot in a single day than I have in a decade of blogging.
That, for me, was the real value of going to Tampa.
And in 2016, I’ll make sure Hoeft goes, too.
