“I am delighted to welcome my fellow Republicans to the land of Minnesota nice,” exclaimed Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann on the floor of the Republican Convention September 2. “It is not just a saying. We really are nice in this state. We’re friendly, happy people.” And although not everyone in the state is Republican, Bachmann said, even the liberals are “happy liberals.”
Campaign Trail Talk agrees with Bachmann. Throughout the city of St. Paul, hundreds of volunteers greeting journalists, delegates and others have been quick to offer any help. They are eager to tell you about the many sites Minnesota has to offer. In the convention hall, the Minneapolis-St. Paul host committee has set up a booth with free snacks, drinks and piles of information about the state. Those who don’t make it to the booth can learn about what the state has to offer from a television ad airing throughout the week.
Are the more than 45,000 visitors taking advantage of the state’s sights? In downtown St. Paul, it seems many are not. In the hours preceding the convention September 2, stores and restaurants opened their doors and hung signs welcoming Republicans, but most were pretty quiet – a sharp contrast to downtown Denver during the Democratic Convention. “We expected a crowd, but it hasn’t happened yet,” said an employee of an Italian sandwich shop less than a block from the convention hall.
There are many possible reasons for the difference. For starters, the weather has not been as nice in Minnesota as it was in Denver. And, the Xcel Center, home to official convention events, is in downtown St. Paul, where security measures required street closures that make navigating the area difficult. The sandwich shop, although outside the security perimeter, was nearly hidden by security fences.
St. Paul may is also competing for attention with bigger “twin city” across the river, Minneapolis. The two cities have promoted themselves as a team to Republicans, hanging street signs that read “Fun Squared” and “Twice as Nice,” but some in St. Paul are jealous that many of the delegates are choosing to spend more time in Minneapolis.
Despite the quiet streets, St. Paul residents and Minnesota officials hope delegates and journalists will want to visit again. It’s a message Bachmann echoed. “Come back to Minnesota,’ she concluded. “We’re a really nice state that loves you.”
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Citizen
5 September 2008 at 17:31 EDT
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McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.
But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.
But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.
When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.
‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.’
Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.