Hustings

I don't think they intended it to be this way, but the Washington Post has an article that actually displays a certain poignancy about George Bush's last campaign swing. Win or lose, this is his last hurrah on the campaign trail. His last trip to the Hustings is actually captured rather well.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo., Nov. 3 — The Gatlin Brothers finished singing, and Larry Gatlin took the microphone to warm up the crowd for his old friend from West Texas. A little red meat never hurt a few days before an election. "I tell ya what," Gatlin told thousands of cheering Republicans, "we're gonna git Osama!"

Instead of Special Forces, though, out onto the stage bounded Louie the Cardinal and Fetch the Dog, presumably to keep the audience entertained for a few more minutes rather than to hunt down the world's most dangerous terrorist. After the Springfield Cardinals mascots finished handing out T-shirts, the loudspeakers blasted out that well-known Republican anthem "We're Not Gonna Take It," by Twisted Sister.

As he crisscrosses Red America in the last campaign that will directly affect his administration, President Bush isn't gonna take it either, or at least he isn't gonna take it lying down. With pollsters and pundits declaring his Republican Party all but out of power in the House and in danger of losing the Senate in Tuesday's elections, Bush has embarked on a final 10-state blitz to save his congressional majorities — and essentially the remainder of his presidency.

He has shucked the coat and tie for shirtsleeves and slipped a little more drawl in his voice as he hits mainly conservative, rural communities. "It's good to be in a part of the country where the cowboy hats outnumber the ties," Bush told thousands of supporters in Billings, Mont., on Thursday, squeezing in a rally just two days before the MetraPark Arena's scheduled "Spay-Neuter Clinic."

And he seems fired up by flag-waving crowds that greet him as a rock star, with young women screaming for him to come shake hands, even if elitists in Washington have written him off. He would love nothing more than to prove all the prog-naw-sti-ka-tors and phil-ah-suh-phi-zers wrong, and score another against-the-odds victory.

"That's not the first time they've been forecasting elections," Bush said here in a line that has become a favorite in recent days. "You might remember in 2004, some of the folks in Washington listened to the prognosticators and they started picking out their offices in the West Wing. And then it turned out the people went to the polls, and the movers weren't needed."

There is a certain amount of condescension here with the references to Bush's sometimes awkward speechifying. Yet there is a real affection that comes across, too. If not by the reporters, then by the crowds. And there is some sympathy from the reporters for this last campaign. Even though I have a lot of disagreements with his policies, I can feel that poignancy of that last hurrah. Win or lose, his career is coming to a close. He has two more years to do the job he was elected to do, but this is his last campaign.