Posted by: Billy Hollis on Saturday, September 15, 2007 As I mentioned earlier this week, Fred Thompson scheduled a campaign event in his hometown today. By sheerest coincidence, I grew up there too. So I drove down today with my mom and two sons to check it out. The town square was shoulder-to-shoulder. I did some quick sample counts of the crowd and estimated a total of six or seven thousand in my visual range. There were more folks down the various side streets of the square, so the grand total probably added a thousand or two. I don't think the town square could have held many more. Not too bad for a town with a total population of less than 11,000. Here's one picture of part of the crowd about an hour and a half before Fred's speech. (After sundown, my pictures dropped off rapidly in quality. Someday, I'm going to have to get a nice camera like Dale's.)  The crowd was enthusiastic and well behaved. Their biggest response came on Fred's lines concerning what he called the "global war" that we're in, and he was more straight up in describing radical Islam as a real menace than any other major politician I've heard. The crowd also liked his lines on Washington politicians being out of touch with the real world. Fred seemed relaxed and confident. He doesn't really try to work people up the way some candidates do. I can see why some commentators call him "low energy" in his stump speech. But I think they may be missing the intensity, which is pretty high. He is talented enough as a speaker that he does not have to inject so much drama into his speech patterns to connect with the crowd. He'll face much, much tougher crowds than this one. This event was as much about the town as it was about Fred. It was clearly a huge social event that probably drew out a lot of folks that are relatively apolitical. But there were a lot of seriously enthusiastic "Fredheads" and "Frednecks" there too. This guy was distributing my favorite bumper sticker of the day:  If "Frederalism" means what it sounds like, I'm all for it. I didn't return blown away by Fred, but given my cynicism about politicans, that's no surprise. I did see someone that talks more clearly to the average voter than any presidential candidate I've seen in a long time. I suspect Fred's going to surprise some people. If you want to see more of my pictures from the day, I've posted them on Flickr. Mosey on over to here. |
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