The Scene From Fort Myers, A Far Cry From The Beltway

 

Beyond the powerful PR for the President, yesterday’s townhall in Fort Myers was a moral victory for the people as well as an opportunity to draw a fundamental contrast between the people and the power.

If the fact has escaped anyone, these are the first presidential townhall meetings in eight years in which the participants haven’t been hand-picked by the White House. What I’ve done above is to intersperse two photos of the stonewalling GOP in Congress with three photos from yesterday’s Obama event. Any association to a “sandwich” is completely intentional, these populist scenes contrasting with those lilly-white conservatives protesting on Capitol Hill.The Fort Myers images represent the visual and emotional highlights of the event, one which offered a great deal more drama and intimacy than Obama’s gathering in Indiana the day before. In Indiana, there was only one video shot which remained fixed on the podium. Here, television provided us an intimate view of a raucous and populist affair.

The first photo shows Obama soliciting a question from Henrietta Hughes (video), a homeless woman who’s now living out of her car. The second photo offers Minority Leader McConnell kvetching after yesterday’s slim passage of the stimulus bill. The third image, a screen grab, comes from the dramatic and powerful exchange between Obama and college student Julio Osegueda (video) who has been working at McDonalds for the past four years. Osegueda, who could hardly contain his emotion, displayed a spontaneity and earnestness that would put Joe the Plumber to shame. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a few minutes. By the way, here’s Julio airborne in the background.) The forth image offers a group of GOP Senators detailing their opposition to the stimulus bill. That exhibition, with Senator Bennett holding his finger in the air, combined with the fact the Senate was voting on the stimulus package during Obama’s town hall, contrasts nicely with the last image, capturing members of the crowd straining to ask the President a question.

Obviously, the people, too, are interested in being heard.