the balloons fell!

Well, it finally happened.

I arrived at the Xcel Center early enough to get on the floor and wander around before the gestapo... err... volunteer staff kicked everyone out. While down there I made it back to the television section and saw sections of a number of television shows.

Security inside the Xcel Center is really odd. They guard the convention floor as if there were piles of gold bullion hidden among the delegations. Funny story- a volunteer refused floor access to Minnesota Congressman Jim Ramstad, even after admitting he knew Ramstad was his personal Congressman.

But there really isn't any security anywhere else within the Center. I wandered around the Club and Suites levels (home to politicians and big money donors) most days looking for famous people or forgotten signs.

On Thursday after I got down on the floor I accidentally wound up on the backstage area where the politicians and news media entered and exited the arena. There were scads of volunteers and security guards everywhere, but they never once stopped me or anyone else. I'm sure most of the politicians/news media/big money donors would have preferred not to have stupid kids like me in their presence, but no one kicked me out. So I stayed.

Now down to business. Today's schedule was a lot more chaff-free and went much quicker. Sadly, due to the hurricane-imposed tightenings College Republican National Committee Chairman Charlie Smith's speech was cut. Charlie and his Exec. Director Ethan Eilon are great guys who helped provide me with many of the opportunities presented in Denver, and it's a shame young people were almost completely left out of the RNC.

Once the groundwork was set by Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback and others, Cindy McCain gave one of the week's better speeches. She did a solid job setting up her husband.

McCain's speech was really weird, almost anticlimactic. It didn't seem like an acceptance speech, it was more like a State of the Union Address. Early on two or three protesters managed to start yelling something- at the time no one in attendance really knew what was going on, except that everyone started chanted USA.

Something that I thought would come off poorly on television was the backdrop, and judging by what I've seen, this is true. In person, the backdrop looked really cool. For most of the speech it was a scape of an American flag against a perfectly blue sky. On the TV up close shots, it just looked like a blue blob. I don't know why they didn't make sure the area behind McCain's head wasn't so odd looking.


The lasting effect of the week is that Sarah Palin's speech is one that will be remembered for years to come as one of the best ever, and McCain's will get shuffled away in to the folder of very good, but not great.

After the speech was over, the balloons fell and everyone cheered. Also a crap-ton of confetti covered everything. An interesting touch is that in addition to the balloons, a number of star covered beach balls were dropped. They got bounced around for a while, but people quickly scooped them up as souvenirs.


Something I learned for the first time during McCain's speech is that, apparently, he was some sort of POW during the Vietnam War? I haven't really heard much about the whole ordeal. Might have to use the ol' Google on that one.

If you look back to this post "rnc rough schedule released" you'll note that I promised to vote for whichever party had the better balloons at their convention (I also gushed about Sarah Palin- before she was even considered a candidate for VP). Well, Obama and the Dems refrained from balloons entirely. And McCain had an exceptional amount of balloons. So I guess it's sealed, I'm voting McCain/Palin...