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Finally I got a chance to see a big-time campaign up close, although it was strictly happenstance. I had been invited to speak at a conference arranged by the Colorado River Water Conservation District, and duly arrived at the Grand Junction Hilton Tuesday night.
Our first clue that something big was about to happen appeared in the lobby, which swarmed with guys in suits. Although some of the seedier aspects of civilization have encroached on the Western Slope -- i.e., the hotel bartender gave me a glass for my beer without even asking, indicating that his clientele these days consists of wimps too pretentious to drink straight from the bottle -- it's still not a place where you normally see milling herds of men in suits.
I get edgy around guys in suits -- the police, allegedly our servants and protectors, never seem to notice that suits are really gang insignia, indicating at best a conspiracy in restraint of trade, and generally a downsizing or merger in the works.
And these were weirder than most gangs of men in suits.
I've seen the X-Files and I can tell,
I whispered to
Martha. The alien androids have arrived. They have no
facial expressions, they all stand and walk the same way,
and they've got wires coming out of their ears. Let's get
out of here before the black helicopters show up and impose
the New World Order upon us simple hard-working
citizens.
You idiot,
she whispered back. They're just
Secret Service agents. Jack Kemp must be staying here
tonight. I read that he was speaking in Fruita tomorrow,
and that's just outside of town.
And so he was. About 11:30 p.m., as we sat in the lobby trying to look innocent, the Secret Service agents formed a row, the door opened, and in stepped the Republican nominee for vice president of the United States of America, followed by an noxious flock of reporters with boom mikes, video cameras and the other paraphernalia of contrived journalism.
We kept a respectful distance. Here was a man who started the day in California, who had been speaking and stumping hard for his ticket, often in front of hot lights, and not a single hair was out of place. The creases on his suit were sharp, his tie hung perfectly. My android theories returned, especially when he didn't throw a football at anybody.
But I figured this was the real thing, especially Wednesday morning when my exploration of the lobby revealed signs advising the location of the Press Filing Room, the Campaign Office and the Kemp Interview Room.
I found a campaign aide (they all wear blue, and their creases do show the effects of long and hard days on the road) and asked her about getting into the interview room.
You'll need some temporary credentials and a
sponsoring media organization,
she explained. And
you'll have to talk to the Secret Service, too.
Let me put in a good word for the Secret Service. I had expected to have to undergo at least a pat-down, and probably a full body-cavity search, every time I went to the ice machine. Instead, they allowed routine activity to proceed undisturbed.
As for some credentials, I thought about calling the Post, but the last time I was in the Post's quarters, it took me 20 minutes to get past security. Scratch that.
I settled for asking the campaign aide about what Kemp
planned to talk about in Fruita. Ending the Clinton
Administration's War on the West,
she said.
You mean all this damn growth we've been having?
I asked. Will he promise to bring back the good old days
of the Reagan years when houses were cheap and there
weren't any jobs and you knew everybody in town and life
proceeded at a slow and reasonable pace?
Not exactly,
she said. We want to promote
economic growth and opportunity in the West, and Dole-Kemp
will get rid of Bruce Babbitt as interior
secretary.
That hardly seemed like news, since new presidents
generally appoint new cabinet secretaries. Does this
mean you're going to subsidize logging, mining and grazing
at higher levels, all the while that you're cutting the
federal budget?
I asked.
You'll have to ask somebody else about that,
she
said. I'm a schedule person, not an issues
person.
That's fair. Nobody can know everything, especially about something that looked as complicated as the Kemp entourage. Counting the media and Secret Service, there must have been at least 50 people, along with at least a dozen vehicles -- all for a speech to about 300 people at a livestock sales yard.
Unfortunately, I had to speak at the same time, so I didn't get a chance to hear the candidate explain how he'd end this barbaric War on the West and return us to our traditional small-town values of isolation and poverty.
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