Pennsylvnia Federation of College Republicans

Last week I had one of the coolest experiences of my fledgling political life. When John McCain came to Pittsburgh for two days, I got to drive press van #2 in the motorcade.

To paraphrase Karen Hughes, former counselor to President Bush, in her terrific description  of campaign life, driving in a motorcade is long hours of tedium punctuated by moments of frantic activity and, occasionally, sheer terror.

We picked up Senator McCain at the airport last Tuesday. Actually, when Straight Talk Air landed and we headed off for our first stop, I got to haul some gear and luggage belonging to the press corps. (This is why this is only one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, and not the coolest.) Because I initially didn’t have any people in my van, I wasn’t inside the official police escort, which means that as we sped down the highway a number of cars jumped in between me and the motorcade. That’s where the “sheer terror” comes in - I was convinced that I was going to lose sight of the rest of the convoy and spend the rest of my life driving aimlessly around western PA in a large van with only some suitcases for moral support.

I somehow managed not to lose the motorcade, and when we finally stopped, I got some actual people in my van! I had the job of transporting representatives of Newsweek, NBC News, and I believe Reuters, to Senator McCain’s surprise dinnertime stop at Pittsburgh’s beloved Primanti Bros. On the way to Primanti’s, I managed to scrape the side of a city bus, and I expected the press pool either to be angry or laugh at me (as a conservative, I’m instinctively suspicious of the media no matter what the situation) but they couldn’t have been nicer about it, heaping blame on the bus driver and cheering me on as I battled rush-hour traffic.

Since the vans couldn’t be left alone once they’d been swept by the Secret Service, I spent the stop at Primanti’s watching from across the street. It was fun watching passers-by approach the restaurant trying to figure out who was there - the place was surrounded by police, Secret Service, and press - and even more fun watching all the people who had decided on a whim to have dinner there, only to find themselves eating just a few tables away from the McCains.

The next morning Senator McCain had a meeting and facilities tour at Consol Energy, just south of the city. I spent the morning running campaign staff members from the hotel to the event site and back. You can tell an awful lot about a candidate by the people he hires, and a lot about a campaign by the way they treat their volunteers - and the McCain staff were some of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with.

My favorite part of the whole experience was watching the Secret Service work. (For anyone else fascinated by this organization, the best book ever written about them is Standing Next to History, written by Joe Petro, who served on protective details for Ford, Reagan, Quayle, and Pope John Paul II among others.) No, I didn’t get to meet Senator McCain - the staff graciously allowed time for all the volunteer drivers to meet the McCains and pose for pictures at the end of the last event, but I was driving someone at the time and my cell phone wouldn’t ring! I’m not bothered by it - I’m sure that McCain will be back to Pennsylvania again and again before the general election, and I’m equally sure that all PA College Republicans will have chances to shake hands with the next President of the United States.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 11:59 pm by Megan Ritter and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.