The White House on Election Night

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

All Tuesday Nov. 4, the television shots of the U.S. capitol were poor. Mist and drizzle obscured the ideal backdrop for what was seen by many as a defining presidential election in American history.

But at a little past 11 p.m. EST it didn’t matter what the city looked like. Barack Obama had been declared the president-elect of the United States. The streets of Georgetown began to flow with ecstatic young supporters. The neighborhood once derided by John McCain as the too frequent host of elite cocktail parties was now a conduit for a different sort of energy. Trailed by honking taxicabs, some weighted with passengers whose limbs flailed out the windows, and their predominately immigrant and black drivers, young people from Georgetown University, dressed in sweatpants and tight jeans, flip-flops and stilettos, marched on M St. chanting, “Yes we did, yes we did!”

Revolution was in the streets. These kids, many just 18 years old, may have thought that they were the ones who created it. Between 10 and 14 years old when George W. Bush was first elected, and gradually alienated by his reaction to 9/11 and his handling of the Iraq War, many had been passionately and personally involved with the election.

Inside a television studio on M Street, a twenty-four-year-old hockey player turned teleprompter operator checked CNN’s electoral map as he guided the moderator for ARD, Germany’s most-watched news network, through his almost 100 segments of election night coverage. Virginia’s numbers were against Obama and he was angry. “I worked so hard there,” he said. His updated vote counts varied by hundreds of votes. The channel’s political commentators began to ask him for input.

Outside, kids continued to flow by, jubilant. Tall, short, athletic, overweight, statuesque, humble, they walked, and then they ran. Some had no idea where they were going. They were just following the crowd. Others knew. M Street spills into Pennsylvania Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue leads to the White House.

Along the way, 51st State Tavern blared MSNBC as a clean-shaven young man wearing a navy blue suit walked out.

A Frenchman from Paris walked in. He asked if you had to specify what beer you wanted and whether you tip the bartender. He had arrived the Friday before to work in TV production. He got two lagers and repeated how lucky his timing was. He was 200 pages into Obama’s book, “Dreams From My Father.”

The U.S., he said, is capable of electing a black man precisely because of our history of immigration and racism. France isn’t ready yet. The immigration in France is just beginning, he said, and most French have not spent any time with a Muslim or an Arab.

“We are the first generation that grew up with Arabs,” said the thirty-year-old. “I think that change will come. Maybe not soon, but it will come,” he said as he slowly drank his beer.

In front of the International Monetary Fund, the subject of furious protests by disenfranchised young people in 2000, a private security guard gave high-fives to passersby.

Waves of students seemed to roll back through the groups going to the White House, hugging, high-fiving and chanting.

A stern-faced cop and his companion in front of the old executive building were the first indication of a limited police presence.

The crowd began to come together and we dove into the teeming masses on the glistening street in front of the glowing White House. Thousands of people had accumulated, many young. Later, the crowd became more diverse in age and race.

“Grace Kohn said you can suck my dick Bush,” said Kohn, a student. Outgoing President George W. Bush had celebrated his wife’s birthday with coconut cake and a gift of earrings that night inside the White House.

Alex Rice, an 18-year-old from George Washington University took a different tack. “I love Obama and support this country,” he said. His disillusionment with Bush came when he was 13, he said, when the United States went to war with Iraq. “Finally we have a president that represents us.” There were chants of “U-S-A.”

The Frenchman saw his first American flag draped across the bare back of a bicycle rider. It was one of a few there. He was surprised. The French flag was a common site during group events, but, after years of representing national pride, it became a symbol of racist nationalism with the campaign by Jean Marie LePen. It became a regular symbol of hyper-nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment when waved at football games. But leading up to the election of Sarkozy, that nationalism began to change to suit the times. The people reclaimed it, ironically by the political posturing of Sarkozy.

It was the political posturing of the Republican party that in the end drove Dana Mozie, “the first hip-hop producer for a sitting president,” to the Obama party that night at The Park on Fourteenth, and then, alone, to the White House.

A hip-hop producer in the early 90s for the group Salt-n-Pepa, he helped bring hip-hop to mainstream America. Starting in 2000, he worked inside the White House under Bush on so-called outreach efforts to the black community. He emerged from those experiences, as did other “guys like me who were surrogates,” disillusioned.

“Republicans never would go to the ghetto,” he said, and as a result would never get the black vote. With Obama campaigning in poor black neighborhoods he noted something special in this candidate.

Still it was difficult for this black candidate to get elected. “One drop of black blood and it costs $670 million,” said Mozie, referring to the cost of the Obama campaign.

But now, the Obama candidacy allows for the “race card” to be thrown out, and “allows for a real sense of inclusiveness,” in America, he said.

The rain had stopped for a while now and Mozie, a dapper man around forty, put his umbrella down and looked wide-eyed at the people who continued to flow past.

“I thought it was a moment for black people, but it tapped something in other people too,” he said.

Mozie had been to the 54th and the 55th inaugurations, but, he said emphatically, “this is the original inaugural parade.”

People continued to squeeze through the tightening crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue. “America is back,” someone said. The fancier election night parties began to spill forth their participants near 1 a.m. Many paused in astonishment before entering the raucous crowd.

“Obama didn’t just change the party,” said Mozie, “he changed the paradigm.”

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.

Success Found Where Politicians Rove

By EUGENE MULERO, Correspondent

Two years ago, I stood in the back of a lavish master-planned community for retirees in Sun Lakes, Arizona, to report on a visit by John McCain. The affair was supposed to be a chance for Maverick to address local resident concerns regarding a nearby airport and the likelihood of increased noise pollution.

Instead, the audience appeared fascinated with McCain’s presence and lobbed softball questions at him that centered around the senator’s next bid for the White House. The palpable excitement in the air quickly evaporated when the late Democratic governor from Montana, Thomas Judge, who was living in Sun Lakes, confronted McCain about his decision to seek the support of his one-time rival, George W. Bush.

Judge tried to torment the senator with the reminder that it was Bush and his campaign staffers who smeared Maverick’s name in the 2000 primary. Judge referred to: “little black charm” — McCain’s adopted daughter, which became a talking point in the Bush camp to persuade South Carolinans to vote for Bushworld, not Maverickland.

McCain grinned while Judge spoke, as if he expected such feedback. He then thanked Judge and said, “With all due respect governor, I don’t hold grudges. I’ve learned that the hard way.”

He answered a few more easy ones, before he signed copies of his latest book for the true believers.

That moment showcased a new John McCain. The McCain of the past — the old man with the bad temper — was gone. This McCain was forgiving, caring and ready to move on.

And that’s why I think he hired Steve Schmidt, or as his friends call him, “Schmidty,” to strategize his campaign against Barack Obama. In their epilogue to “Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Architect of George W. Bush’s Remarkable Political Triumphs,” the writers end with the notion that perhaps Karl Rove will go on to mastermind the candidacy of another presidential hopeful:

“It already appears that Rove will have first pick from among a large stable of eager Republican presidential candidates in 2008, a potential list that includes Jeb Bush, Bill Frist, Rudy Giuliani, and two Pennsylvanians, Tom Ridge and Senator Rick Santorum.”

McCain bringing Schmidt on board was a significant move — a power play if you will — given that Schmidt is Karl Rove’s protégé; a man walking in the footprints of the Boy Genius who got Bush in the White House.

I’m amazed that it actually comes down to a line from “The Godfather”: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Yet, that’s what Maverick has done — aligned himself with the Boy Genius he once publicly despised.

With so much talk about how historic this election is, the (mainstream) media still doesn’t seem ready to challenge the candidates. Even New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, when he spoke at National Journal’s office earlier this summer, criticized the media for not telling the public where these candidates stand on issues and who’s working for them. There’s no doubt Rove is controlling the McCain campaign, yet, with few exceptions (Jonathan Adler, among them) hardly anybody is reporting this story.

Schmidt, just like Rove in 2000, is already relying on the politics of race to win this election for Team McCain. And this is what many Americans expected — McCain and the Republicans asking us: Who’s afraid of a big black man?

The McCain camp believes the reason Obama and McCain are tied in the polls is because Obama is African-American. They might be correct, only because there’s no other reason to explain why the candidates are tied. Obama has been nearly flawless in the general election. He is looking to succeed a lame-duck president with historically low approval ratings, and his opponent, who was never seen as the party’s favorite, supports an unpopular war.

A Quinnipiac University Poll released July 29 shows that it’s not hard to find the voters afraid of a big black man in the White House. According to the results, Obama lacked the support of white Gen X blue collar men — the newest NASCAR dads. This demographic is sitting comfortably in the McCain camp. While Maverick has to fight to keep them there, Obama has to draw them to him, which seems to be easier said than done.

Evidence of the Rovian influence is becoming more obvious by the day. McCain has begun to compare Obama to Paris Hilton and is telling the public Obama is inexperienced about Washington, he’s naïve on foreign affairs and he’s African-American.

Unfortunately, to many voters from red states, that last point is a trump card.

“This election is about Senator Obama’s fitness to be president of the United States,” Peter Brown, associate director of the Quinnipiac Poll, said last month at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in D.C. “From Senator McCain’s point of view he has no choice, if he wants to win, but to convince the American people that Senator Obama is not fit to be president of the United States. And you don’t do that running a positive campaign.”

The potential is that we may live, once again, in Karl Rove’s America. You’d think that would make news. But through Schmidt, Boy Genius Rove has McCain, and the world, on a string.

Eugene Mulero may be reached at Eugene.Mulero@gmail.com.