I met the Governor. Joe called me over. We talked about – guess what? – blogging! He said he hadn’t realized how deeply issues-oriented were the readers of his blogging on Larry Lessig’s site. I said that I thought it worked out well ultimately. No presidential candidate had done that before. We’re all making this up as we go along. And then we talked about the value of the campaign blog.

What can you tell about a person in a few minutes of casual conversation? Lots. The Governor looked me in the eye, engaged immediately, did no meaningless “Hey, howya doin’?”, turned to a topic that was interesting and real, was perfectly at home – not a flicker of hesitation – in talking about a episode in which he didn’t do as well as he’d liked, was alert, friendly, curious.

Compare and contrast with, oh, let’s say, President Bush…

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[Joe Trippi has just declared me the first blogger to travel as a blogger on a presidential press bus. Woohoo! I think I’ll print myself up a certificate!]

There are four buses for the press and staff. I looked in each and picked the studious one where most people have their laptops out. I’m just that sort of guy,

Joe Trippi’s son just came through with an assortment of potato chips. I chose BBQ because it just looks so professional to have your fingertips and lips ringed with orange flecks.

I’m sitting next to Patsy Wilson from Reuters; she’s got a White House press pass hanging from her bag. In front of me, Mario from the Getty Archive is editing some photos he’s taken of the event: bring a face out of the shadows, turn up the contrast on a woman holding a Dean sign, upload it via a cellphone modem. Isn’t technology amazing?

It’s quite a collection of journalists. Maybe 30 of them. CNN. The NY Times. Reuters. C-SPAN, Newsweek. Fourteen months before the election. This must be what momentum feels like.

On the plane now. It’s a chartered 737 sitting on a back leg of the airport. No metal detectors here, but they do a thorough job going through everyone’s luggage. The press sits in the back of the plane, the staff in the front. Plastic clumps of grass are taped to the seats because this is a “grassroots” campaign, which is somewhere between charming and hokey.

The Governor enters the plane last of all. (Yes, they wand him before he enters … you never know, given his stand on gun control, he could be packing heat :) The press crowds the aisle, pointing cameras at him. Now it’s like a rugby scrum except with cameras and inside a plane. The Governor talks with reporters until we’re all told to sit down so we can take off…

We’re half an hour into the trip and it’s a bit of a party. People are standing in the aisles. There are dozens of conversations going on. It’s festive.

Some of the staffers are sleeping, having worked their butts off for an event that pumped up a crowd of 4,000+. I’ve talked with some of them and they feel they’ve turned a corner. The campaign is on its way. (One of the journalists on the bus said that you can tell a lot about a campaign by how well organized the press facilities are and this campaign was running exceptionally smoothly.)

It’s festive but it’s also weird. Behind me, one media person is interviewing another about her reaction to the campaign so far. The Governor is sitting with a staffer, and the cameras are on. Always. You could desalinate a small pond with all that a wattage.

The plane is touching down…

All these entries are cross-posted at the Dean campaign blog

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All entries from the campaign trail are cross-posted at the Dean campaign blog.

Gov. Dean enters as U2’s “Beautiful Day” plays. The crowd chants. Dean starts strong. After saying that the Sheriff estimates the crowd at 4,000, he says: “The president is sleeping comfortably in Crawford tonight. And while he’s sleeping, we’re going to take our country back.”

I’m not going to blog his entire speech. But it’s good. It’s focused on issues, with passing funny jabs at Bush. But, more important, he’s doing a good job of flipping the cliched expectations. For example, he warns us that the Republicans just don’t know how to handle money: “Borrow and spend, borrow and spend.” And he goes after the idea that the Republicans are tough on defense and Democrats aren’t; “North Korea is about to become a nuclear power because President Bush won’t sit down and talk with someone he doesn’t like.” He says that he won’t hesitate to send American soldiers into battle but not without telling us the truth about why.

He talks about balancing the budget, about providing educational and child services. He talks about Martin Luther King’s dream and says “This president played the race card” with regard to affirmative action, “and for that alone he deserves to be sent back to Crawford, Texas.” He talks about the make-up of the Supreme Court. He talks about being a world leader not just through military strength but also by being respected around the world.

He urges people to sign up on the Internet. “We won’t spam you … except for the last three weeks of every quarter when we’re trying to raise money.”

“The reason we’re going to beat this president is that we’re going to give the 50% of Americans who’ve given up on the political process a reason to vote again.”

The Governor has connected with this crowd, and it seems to me that he’s connected beyond issues and politics. And that’s exactly what he has to do.

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Ok, I was off by a little bit. I’m not good at crowd estimates, but it’s got to be in thousands, not hundreds. The cab driver found the venue by following the stream of people. All types. Stand still and every type of American will pass by.

After the predictable Bruce Springsteen recording on the PA – it’s a sign of age that he’s become a safe choice – and some Loving Spoonful, the local mayor (Dan Gardner) talks briefly. Then Jasper Hendricks who remembers segregation. And Isis Castro who spoke from her experience as an immigrant to this country.

Elaine Castro says that in the Dean campgian she’s reecovered her enthusiasm for the political that she lost in her youth. She says that Gov. Dean, among other qualities, is “articulate.” The crowd goes wild.

Bill Euille, the first African American mayor of Alexandria, speaks.

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I’m on my way to a Howard Dean “event” at a place called Cherry Hill Farms in Falls Church. My participation was arranged so quickly that I have few expectations about the nature and scale of the event. Twenty-five people in a living room? Two hundred people screaming like bobby soxers? Because it’s the kickoff of the Dean campaign’s “Sleepless Summer Tour,” I’m pretty confident that it’s not going to be a dozen oil industrialists balancing caviar-topped crackers on their checkbooks as they wink and say how they know they can count on the Governor…

It’s a lovely summer day no matter how we humans choose to populate it.

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I listened to Chris Lydon‘s recording of a talk Gov. Dean gave a few days ago at a gathering of 250 people in New Hampshire. Listen to this mp3 and you’ll have a good idea if you want to support Dean or not.

I do.

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The Dean campaign has invited me to travel with the Governor — ok, actually, in the large crowd of people around the Governor — during the first leg of the “Sleepless Summer Tour” in order to blog about it on the Dean campaign weblog. I’m going to meet up with them in Falls Church, VA on Saturday night and go to Milwaukee for a late-night rally. I’ve never traveled with a presidential campaign, although in 1960 I was attendee #15,672 at a rally for JFK at the Roosevelt Field Mall. I’m excited.

My inclination at the moment is to do a more complete write-up on my site (= here) and a briefer version on the Dean weblog. As you may know from my conference blogging, I tend to go on a bit recording details, and I don’t think that’s exactly what the Dean weblog folks are looking for. But, we’ll have to see as the events unfold.

[Disclosure: I work for the Dean campaign as Senior Internet Advisor. No money changes hands, but the campaign is paying my airfare. I am partisan.]

Chris Lydon has posted sounds from his recent trip to New Hampshire where, by chance, the first “hot house-party…was Howard Dean’s.” He includes Dean’s 24-minute speech, 20 minutes of Q & A with Dean, and Q & A with the crowd. I am on the road and haven’t had a chance to download the mp3’s, but I have no problem blindly recommending anything Chris does.

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I have no idea if there’s any truth to this, but this article claims that the CIA engaged in an “ultra-secret operation to electronically remove an estimated $10 billion out of the Iraqi Central Bank hours before the start of Persian Gulf War II. The whereabouts of the money is not known.” The article (on the American Free Press site) cites International Currency Review, a real journal with no Web site that I can find. That this story hasn’t been picked up anywhere either indicates that the media are sheep or, more likely, that the story is bogus.

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Chip sends us to a page with a running counter toting up the cost of the war in Iraq, based on figures from the Congressional Budget Office. It also lets you choose form a list of US towns to see how much it’s costing viewed locally. Sure, the page is a gimmick, but it’s a useful one, helping us to get our heads around some 8-figure numbers.

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Terrific, considered, moderate, fair, personal and funny assessment of Dean’s electability in Salon today by Joan Walsh. She asks the questions we all have when we first look at Da Gov. (A paid membership is required, or you can choose instead to look at an ad.)

There’s also a straightforward story by Joanna Weiss about Dean’s use of the Internet on the front page of the Boston Globe today (and gone tomorrow). It goes way past the “Candidate Uses Internet to Raise Money” story that initially got the attention of so many reporters.

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