Many spend holiday with the Obamas
While on campaign trail in N.H., it's one photo-op after another
Sunday, May 27. 3:30 p.m.
Focus and Click ...
We are in clapboarded Conway Village, close to the Maine border. Barack, Michelle, their daughters Malia and Sasha, Michelle's older brother Craig Robinson (a basketball coach at Brown University) and his wife, Kelly, are traveling in a recreational vehicle and they stop, along with an entourage of press (who ride on a bus) and many dour-looking Secret Service men (appropriately, in black SUVs), outside Kennett High School.
"We're scouting out spots for summer travel," Obama tells the crowd inside. "If anyone has a recommendation for good diners ..."
Obama stands among 1,500 people in the Kennett gymnasium, very photogenic with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. He gives his stump speech -- we've become "cynical about our politics" -- and since this is Memorial Day weekend, adds new ideas about improving mental health care for soldiers and returning veterans.
He notes 631,000 veterans -- nearly one-third of the troops returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan -- suffer from mental illness. The press is given a paper detailing Obama's ideas to expand military health services, hire more mental health professionals, improve screening of recruits and support military families.
But it is Michelle who steals the scene when someone asks why her husband would make a good president. She stands up, casts an imperious eye at Obama and tells him to sit down.
"He is not running for president because he wants to be president. That's the irony," she says. "He is running because he thinks we can do better as a country."
Sunday, 7 p.m., Berlin, N.H.
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Just before leaving Conway, photo-op of Obama carrying bags of food from the Wild Boar restaurant for the riders on the RV: chicken fingers, BBQ ribs, Mom's meatloaf.
At the ice cream social later in Berlin, Michelle is asked to introduce her husband, but avoids saying anything critical, such as his habit of not picking up his socks.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd seems to have smothered that innocent impulse by criticizing it as demeaning. I think it makes Obama look like any ordinary guy. But Dowd has more influence than I do.
Obama is asked by someone about improving race relations. "Race has become one of the central dilemmas of American history and often that history has been tragic," Obama acknowledges. But "I think we've made enormous progress." He concludes that improved education and health care would go a long way to rectify racial inequities.
Just before he leaves, Obama helps himself to some mint chocolate chip and vanilla ice cream; he serves Michelle a cup of chocolate ice cream. The cameras eat it up.
Memorial Day, Monday, 8 a.m., Littleton, N.H., home of fictional optimist Pollyanna
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"Pollyanna suits Littleton because we have a determined optimism and a can-do philosophy," says Karen Keazirian, executive director of Pollyanna New Hampshire, who is waiting for Obama. (The author of the book, Eleanor H. Porter, was born here.)
Obama is here to lay a wreath in front of the town's war memorial. A reporter asks him about Republican claims that he and other Democratic presidential candidates do not support the military because they voted against increased spending in Iraq.
"There is nobody that doesn't support the troops," he replies. "It's really a political argument designed to deflect criticism from the president's policies in Iraq, and everyone knows that."
This morning a crew from the ''Today'' show has turned up, including host Meredith Vieira. The Obama segment will be on between 7 and 7:30 a.m. today.
Monday, 8:45 a.m.
Focus and Click ...
Obama walks across a covered bridge, pungent with the smell of cedar, over the picturesque Ammonoosuc River. He is headed toward the Littleton Senior Center where he offers a "preview" of the health-care policy he is unveiling today in Iowa City -- with a need for lower drug costs negotiated by the government, preventive health care and the ability to carry our health information on a key-chain tag to lessen the paperwork.
Then he goes to a house party with Vieira in tow.
Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., 2:30 p.m.
Focus and Click ...
Six thousand people are lined up in the Rockefeller Courtyard to see Obama. He gives his stump speech. They applaud and leave smiling.