Category Archives: Politics

The crowd cheers.

She welcomes Obama as a “thoughtful and cool leader” and as “hoopster in chief” says he’s welcome in the Hurricane’s basketball practice facility.

The followup, the student body president, is wearing an orange and green UM shirt. No coat and time for South Florida. He also speaks a lot longer then Shalala. But he ends strong, “We are honored to welcome you to the U.” The crowd loves it.

And then….nothing…the canned Presidential music is back on…

“The program will begin momentarily.”

This is good. They’ll get all the other stuff out the way early.

And indeed, we begin with the student body president leading the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then a UM student sings the National Anthem. She’s good, but now I want the opening pitch… and in a way we’re getting it: Shalala.

That is what they are doing in groups in the bleachers. Because my view of the bleachers, themselves at a right angle to the podium, is obstructed by a phalanx of TV cameras on a giant riser, I can’t tell if they are being egged on by someone, if a TV camera is panning the crowd and they are performing for it, or this is just a way to practice for the next Canes game.

It’s good to be press. While hundreds of students sweltered in a long snaking line waiting patiently and by all appearances cheerfully to clear security, the press go round the side and have their own dedicated friskers. I was in in five minutes flat.

With the event due to start at 2:30, that gave me about an hour and half to hang around. The bigfoot press all have reserved tables, and move with the POTUS. They’re not here yet, as he’s at what was supposed to be a secret undisclosed event in the Engineering School, watching a demo. The Miami Hurricane scooped the world on that one.

According to the Hurricane, today’s speech — for which there doesn’t seem to be an advance text — will be on Energy Policy. That probably explains the very large sign saying “AMERICAN ENERGY”

It turns out I was wrong about the location. They didn’t use the Convocation, but a much smaller next door building that is called the Field House, which explains why tickets were so hard to get. There is a small bleacher and a medium sized SRO space, that does resemble a mosh pit, except that the students are in a very good mood. From my caged-in space in the press zone, I saw some very happy law students.

The local press did a couple interviews. One was with Donna Shalala, who as usual said all the right things (“We have a great faculty.”). She also explained how she got Obama to come: “I begged.”

Of course, Florida being a big swing state, maybe the biggest, had nothing to do with it.