Campaign Trail

Hearing the issues

• Matthew Price
• 13 Oct 08, 08:35 PM GMT

It is impossible to judge these things perfectly, and I am sure plenty of people have a different take on this rally in Virginia Beach, Virginia, but it seemed a bit lacklustre to me.

The crowd did get geed up, on many occasions. And maybe it's unfair to point out that we watched several dozen people leaving a good 10 minutes before the end of John McCain's speech - since many thousands more stayed.

Surely, though, they came to see him, to hear him. It's not like a football game when your team is losing by a big margin and you stride out in protest or simply to get to the car park before everyone else. Or perhaps that is exactly what it is like?

Those who left though were in the minority, by far.

Before the rally started I spoke to a couple of ladies to get a sense of what they wanted to hear from John McCain.

Bonnie Proutt (who gave me one of her fantastic homemade almond cookies "to keep your sugar levels up") and Carol Rothman are their names.

Carol said she "didn't want to hear" any more negative attacks against Barack Obama: "We want to hear the issues."

Bonnie told me it was all about "policies. I think he's doing a disservice to himself with the negative campaigning," she added.

Others seem to agree.

So fast-forward less than an hour, through country singer Hank Williams Jnr, then Cindy McCain, Sarah Palin, and finally John McCain (who did focus on the issues), and what had Bonnie and Carol thought?

"He's much stronger in person than on television," said Carol.

"Very powerful. The taxes, the economy, the health - he was wonderful," Bonnie said.

OK, they are only two observers, but I do think we sometimes chose to ignore the calm, sober, reflective Americans who simply like John McCain. They have been lost in recent days in a flurry of articles that have focused on the more angry elements of the senator's support base. It's good we hear such voices, of course, but we shouldn't forget those like Bonnie and Carol.

And they might have had a point, these two ladies who I guess are in their late 50s.

If McCain can focus on the issues he might claw back some ground. With the economy so bad, the noise it's generating is drowning out everything else - it has to be his narrative too.

That said, the McCain campaign - if it can re-focus on the economy now - may have (as far as it is concerned) played a blinder.

The last few days of negative campaigning have pushed a slew of rumours and innuendo about Barack Obama into many voters' minds.

One man I met on the way into the rally told me Obama "is friends with terrorists." Do you actually believe that, I asked? "Absolutely," he replied.

And then there was Hank Williams Jnr who performed on stage before and after the speeches.

One song, was about McCain and Palin, and he sang: "They don't have terror friends to whom their career is linked."

McCain can focus on the economy, if last week has got enough of his supporters continuing the negative campaigning themselves - with or without his blessing.