Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Obamarama is right around the Bend

That's right, folks, Barack Obama is coming to South Bend! We've got "tickets," though we're a little worried about early we have to get in line (doors open at 8pm). I say "tickets" in quotation marks because I have a suspicion that it's totally open to the public and the "tickets" were just an excuse to snag our contact info and of whomever we invited. It's fine, though, they already had all that info.

And for you Benders, no, it's not "hypocritical" for the South Bend School Corp. to allow Obama to use Washington High. Their reason for keeping Clinton out was that it was a "distraction" to students and that they would be a "captive audience," and that there would be security concerns for them. This week, however, is spring break so there will be no students, which obviates the reasons for keeping the politicians out. My understanding is that this is a longstanding policy, so there's no indication of changing the rules for Obama. More likely, the policy was made back when no one would ever have thought that two candidates of this caliber would still be fighting for the nomination by the time Indiana's number came up, and when the call came from the Clinton campaign, the bureaucrat who answered the phone lacked the sense or the initiative to defy policy for such an event.

The policy is stupid, and I hope the school corp. has learned a lesson from this mess, but as the adage goes, there is no need to ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence.

2 comments:

TioChuy said...

I would suggest arriving quite early unless the Obama campaign is very different than the Clinton campaign in the "ticket" area. We "RSVP'ed" to Clinton and it didn't count for anything but a bunch of friggin phone calls. The line by-the-way wrapped around Lubbock High and down a few blocks. So, with Obama's pull I'm sure the line will be quite long with people waiting to touch his vestments. ;)

el ranchero said...

We did end up going early, and I'm glad we did, even though for our rally the tickets were actually meaningful. People without tickets didn't get in.