By Thom Calandra
KENTFIELD -- Fantasy days and dizzy girls, I'm coming back.
On Sunday, the California mist evaporated. The sun, storybook suburb for gosh-sake, it shone on an enormous yellow mansion in Marin County, California. Oh yeh, and I was one of six in the crowd, at this garden reception for Sen. Barack Obama, I was one of the several fortunate enough to pop The Candidate a question.
Oh yes: good morning, voldy morts!
I am, we all know, no longer a cheeky journalist, but I had a question that needed asking. Und besides, our boy, Skylar, invited by the senator's staff to sit on immaculate lawn just inches away from the senator, well, at least we got a double-take out of the 12-year-old ... and one hopes, a civics lesson from this elegant, barry-toned speaker and professor of law.
So the mist clears and wham, the senator is actually early, his staffers told us all. Barack Obama's chat to a crowd of 300 ran about 35 minutes, and the answer he gave me -- I asked him, given those hypothetical 3 a.m. phone calls to commanders-in -chief, well, shoot, I asked the senator how prepared he was to take the 9 a.m. phone calls from Wall Street as the nation's chief accountant -- his answer/his answers ran 5 minutes. I swear, he looked me in the eye 80 percent of the time. Good answer, too.
"We're what, 16th or 20th in broadband speeds? Hey nothing against South Korea, they're OK. But we can do better than South Korea," he said. He says. He saith.
Sen. Obama in his Wall Street mini-muse had the what, the courage, the verve to suggest that NOT ALL KIDS should be expected to attend university. Bravo for him. The senator from Illinois also understands upside and downside risk and, presumably, the screen-pocked world of those money-seeking missiles at Broad & Wall: zee quants.
Sen. Obama and hired guns are Internet savvy, as we all know from BO.com. More than 90 percent of the $55 million the BO campaign raised in March (or its most recent 30-day period, I am not sure which) came via zee Internet. Sen. Obama, in a Washington of group money hugs aka PACs, had the 20-20 almost two years ago to assemble an Internet-ready team that embraced, and is still embracing and validating, the crowd.
In a way, the senator, thin as a rail here in Kentfield, Calif., as rays of sunshine mixed with nearby shoots of lavender to lend his crumpled suit and scuffed clodhopper shoes a hint of velvet (OK so I'm no Hemingway!), the senator understood the wisdom of the crowd. (Mr. Surwoecki, yes!) Back then in February 2007 when BO decided to run for high office, I mean. He knew to work the franchise. About half of that $55 million, the senator pointed out from his slight podium, about half came from donors of $50 or less. Sounds like the wonder of micropayments, delivered via broadband. Nearly all of it to BarackObama.com. Take that, SOUTH KOREA!
The eight or 10 kids at his feet on this Sunday afternoon in Northern California were actually listening, some of them, one or two of them, as Sen. Obama noticed, not even having been born when he made his choice to run for USA Prez 14 months ago. I think the kids were tuned in because Barack Obama has a gift, the gift of gab: neither preachy nor speechy. He's a bit like the Mr. Rogers of speakers. Even when he is quoting MLK's "the fierce urgency of now."
(By the way, how come no one, or hardly anyone, quotes my Bob anymore? "This is the story of the Hurricane/The man the authorities came to blame ... for something that he never DONE ...")*
Even when Sen. Obama is conveying anguish, he is so Mr. Rogers. Mellow? Maybe. Or spooning out empathy. Or joking around. No prepared script. ''Heya," he seems to be saying sotto voce, ''It's just me, man. Í didn't like plan this, you know.'' Perhaps the funniest moment came when he addressed the sticky ickiness of The Party, you know, the D-question, as in: how does one unify the Party after all those delegates choose their candidate? "Well," he said, and one here can imagine Barack Obama shifting a toothpick around his mouth with his tongue, "I'm not certain, but I think I can give a pretty good speech at that there convention."
The senator, as we are learning, knows his business. What would you expect from a professor of constitutional law? For example, when I asked him about Wall Street and the credit crisis, he telegraphed straight off how the Federal Reserve's missing piece of the rescue package several weeks ago was ensuring the world, and the many investment bankers in this SF-Marin County crowd certainly were listening keenly, ENSURING that banks still face downside risk. "Otherwise," he said, "it's all upside and no downside, right? If you're going to be the lender of last resort ... " Well, darn tootin' someone in this age of exuberance has to make some DC patches to high-stakes lending practices -- is what the man is saying.
Nothing against our present president. TP The President believes fiercely in what he's doing, I just know it. And I mean no sarcasm -- come on, this is me speaking, voldy morts. But facts are facts. Money talks. You know who taught me that: Michael Bloomberg, Mayor Mike, when I helped run his European news desk in London and before I triple-handedly kick-started the news arm of CBS MarketWatch and MarketWatch.com. Money is facts.
Michael Bloomberg and his Number One, his editor, Matt Winkler, they knew way back then in 1994 or 1995 that $ numbers speak volumes. They knew Gov. Bill was going to become President Bill because they were charting GDP and the jobs numbers and income levels on their Bloomberg screens. Mayor Mike in NYC, he lives on stats, feeds on them. Give me all the stats, all the info you can, and we'll make some informed decisions, decisions that might help us negotiate crime and poverty and infrastructure and the economy and education, Mayor Mike is saying in his little oval there on Canal Street.
Only Sen. Obama, with his facts, he has I don't know, I guess it was the sun, he has this glow, you know? Warmth. His classmate from Honolulu, Pam Hamamoto, our little girl's chief administrator at the Tiburon Girls Softball League, Pam has that glow, too. Pam was there at the reception/fundraiser. Maybe it's Hawaii, I dunno where the glow comes from. (I get mine from the Strawberry Rec District pool. Backstroke does wonders.) And like I said, no, I'm not star struck. Back in my day (I'm safely retired now at age 51), back in my day I got to meet and interview former Presidents (Gerald Ford), current candidates (Jesse Jackson, Walter Mondale, etc.) and a ton of senators and reps and guvs, including my faves: Bruce Babbitt, Bill Richardson and Pete Domenici and Paul Simon. And some mayors, too, my favorites locally being Art Agnos and Dianne Feinstein of SF.
The fried wontons were terrific, according to my boy. (OK, so I don't do snacks between 2 and 5 in the afternoon. I'm thin as a rail, too. But I wasn't just off the plane
from Montana.) And Sen. Obama has a great sense of humor; he calls Hillary's crowd the sisterhood, but in a way that is not at all sarcastic. "Look, they think," he stammered (and I paraphrase here from the notes I scribbled on Skylar's wonton-greased napkin, "the sisters think," he said, trying to share HOW HE FEELS about running against Sen. Clinton, "these women who feel I'm cutting in line here, they think ... they think I'm a ... I don't know ... they think I'm a ... MAN."Good one, Senator. (Yes I am/and I can't help/but love you so.) Come swim with me and our small band of gals and guys some morning at the Strawberry Pool here in Tiburon, Senator.
That's all for now, voldy morts. Maybe some of Skylar's photos of the candidate in a day or less, right here and via ThomCalandra.com. Please excuse the politicking. Yes, I'm a lifelong Democrat, but little secret: please don't tell my wife, I voted for Governor Arnold last time around. And if Mayor Mike were one day to run for HO HO (high office), I'd probably give him my nod.
-- Thom Calandra in Tiburon (and Kentfield) (Photos courtesy of Skylar Calandra & Dad)
* Oh yeh, more Bob: 'Coz one day, he would have been champion of the world.' Hurricane Carter, that is.
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