374. As Seen on TV

Earlier in the day, I ran into one of very favorite people, my friend Stuart, in the courthouse alley – always a dangerous place to hang out in Louisville - who informs me he is off to the airport and en route to Denver. He actually said Boulder and I’m sure he said it for a reason. After all, his professional trade is serving as a spokesperson.

I wished him well on what will prove to be one of our Republic’s most historic occasions, the nomination by a major political party of a non-white as its candidate for President of the United States. By any measurement, that’s just cool. Anyone who reads back through my entries will find that I never thought we would be confirming the nomination of United States Senator Barack Obama at our convention next week. Although I had the pleasure of meeting him at the September 2006 rally at Slugger Field, had signed up for the Draft Obama website only a day after its inception, and have been totally mesmerized like so many others, for a very long time I thought another United States Seantor, Hillary Clinton, would be our nominee.

Even so, neither of them was my first choice. That was United States Senator Chris Dodd, the person (other than Mike Gravel) who best represented my positions on a number of issues, as well as the second oldest of the old white men running as a Democrat for president this year. Gravel was the oldest. Of course, across the aisle, both John McCain and (well across the aisle) Ron Paul are considerably older than Chris Dodd. Congressman Paul was 73 on the 20th; Senator McCain will be 72 on the 29th. For the record, Senator Obama is eleven months younger than me, and I’m pretty damn young by comparison to McCain and Paul.

I really wanted to attend the convention this year and had early on made inquiries about doing so in some capacity other than a delegate or an alternate, neither of which I sought at the State Convention back in June. Since then, a number of my friends, and a few who aren’t friends, have asked me to join them, offering rides in their cars, and floorspace in their hotel rooms once there. Such offers reminded me of a few Young Democrats of America conventions I attended back when I was thinner, younger, and had more hair than my friend Stuart does now. But, alas, those days have passed.

I’ve been watching both the Democratic and Republican conventions on television since I was a little kid. Even though I gave up TV in 1984, the two conventions, along with the Winter and Summer Olympics, are events which have always drawn me back to the television set, at least for a few days. But with the advent of live blogging and wireless feeds, I’m more likely to be tuned to a computer screen this time around. Even so, being there would be so much more educational, and (tongue planted firmly in cheek) perhaps even fun. One could only imagine who I might see, what I might say, or where I might find myself, given five days of freedom at the Pepsi Center (above) in the Mile High City with 5,000 delegates, another 15,000 media types, and 45,000 or more lookers-on, the category in which I would be found. Oh the possibilities.

Instead, like the rest of the world, I’ll be watching from afar, in this case about 1,100 miles due east of the action. But, I won’t be the only one watching. Suffice it to say, this is one convention whose pounding gavels, campaign speeches, and uproarious celebrations will be heard not only here along the Left Bank of the Ohio River near Milepost 606, but throughout our land and all the others on the relatively small orb in the endless skies we call home. And its importance is for the moment immeasurable. That will be left to historians twenty, fifty, or one hundred years from now.

Let the games begin.