MICHAEL PASTERNAK writes:
It is back to reality.
A few days ago in Davenport, Iowa, I was able to walk up to within inches of Arizona Senator John McCain. I shook his hand and felt it was my reporter's duty to ask him a question, which he pretty much ignored. However, I did shake his hand. I did ask him a question. He did acknowledge me briefly. I was covering the presidential candidate ever so briefly.
Iowa is the first, but it is the first of 50. I am not following the senator as he travels from state to state, and possibly, from fourth place to first place. When I saw him in person it was pre-caucuses and there was hope for his campaign, but he was considered a presidential afterthought for many in Iowa. Now he is on television leading in polls in New Hampshire. I watched both the Republican and Democratic debates on ABC over the weekend, and Senator McCain was now the front-runner in the Granite State. It wasn't me asking him a question, but ABC's nightly newscast anchor Charlie Gibson.
I got a taste of covering a national election, and I think I am hungry for more. I have never considered myself a political junkie, but it is possible I might become one in the future. Like Senator Barack Obama, I flipped back and forth from the Republican debates and the NFL playoffs, so I was not mesmerized by the Republicans' answers. But I was watching the debates seriously interested in what the politicians were going to say.
This blog is for a Covering the Iowa Caucuses class. I wonder what I would be saying if it was also for Covering the New Hampshire Primary or Covering the South Carolina Primary. I am back in Chicago insulated geographically from the presidential elections, but part of me wishes I were in New Hampshire and later South Carolina (not Florida) to see up close how a presidential election happens in America.
Michael Pasternak is a graduate student in journalism from Coral Springs, Florida.
Posted by awiens at January 8, 2008 5:36 PM
