Otherwise it all looked very intimate, authentic and unstaged.
Friday's meeting was actually held on a front yard because its host -- Philip Phelps, a 25-year-old pizza delivery man -- doesn't have a porch. Phelps was one of three "regular people" meeting with Edwards, all of whose hardships jibe neatly with the campaign's "Real Plan for a Strong Economy."
"It's very hard, isn't it?" Edwards asked after Phelps detailed his struggle to put himself through college. Edwards, deeply tanned, was hairsprayed and in a blue dress shirt with no tie. His hands were folded on his lap and his head bobbed in a slow, understanding nod while dozens of cameras clicked and a loud TV reporter did a live shot 25 feet away.
It started to rain.
Shirley Wood was telling Edwards how she was just laid off from her job at GM. He told her he was the son of a mill worker and had seen, firsthand, the ravages of plant closings. And that he and John Kerry are committed to keeping jobs in the United States and enforcing trade agreements.
It started to rain harder.
"Time to wrap up," an advance man said, and the lights went off and everyone slopped through the mud back to their vans and buses and limousines.
And Edwards thanked his panel of regular people for a "really great discussion," which lasted a total of 12 minutes.
Holding an Audience
Both Cheney and Edwards are at their best before small groups. Cheney, who had planned to teach political science before he entered politics, speaks into his chin, in the matter-of-fact mumbles of a professor who has been teaching the same class for 35 years. Sometimes, when the questions are asked, he looks distracted (he began swabbing his ear with his pinkie in Joplin). But he conveys the authority of one who has clearly been around and knows more than he's telling.
Edwards honed his speaking skills in front of juries. He is a whiz at eye contact and holding his hands far apart to project openness. He looks like a terrific listener, cocking his head, nodding rhythmically, asking empathetic questions. He looks like he feels your pain.
Cheney has been briefed on your pain. But his mind is heavy with the ominous. He is at his most commanding when discussing the prospective horrors of the post-9/11 age -- bioterror, beheadings. Speaking in a grave monotone, like the narrator of a Civil War documentary, Cheney leaves the hope-and-optimism stuff for the president.
The enemy is "sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal," Cheney said in a speech in Dayton, quoting from the 9/11 commission report. It's inevitable that the United States will be hit again. He leaves people nodding.
Edwards leaves them pumped. He is a rollicking speaker, with a booming, drawling voice that gains momentum as he goes. After the front porch meeting, Edwards addressed a rally of 1,000 people who waited in the rain for him to arrive at Mott Community College in Flint. "HELLO, FLINT!" Edwards yelled like an arena rocker, making sure to sure to "thank y'all for waitin' out in the rain" and stirring his crowds to responsive chants of "Hope is on the way."
Edwards's surefire applause lines include: The GOP is bent on "tearing us apart, not bringing us together," any reference to nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the president's "go it alone" foreign policy, the shame of having 35 million people living in poverty in the United States, the need for a higher minimum wage and the acknowledgment that the country has "a long way to go" on civil rights.
