Obama rally video.

Meade films Bruce Springsteen singing about never surrendering and a lefty anti-Obama protester with a sign that says "Where was Obama during the Wisconsin uprising (and the recall)???" Then Springsteen sings something that sounds to Meade like "land of broken dreams" — or was it "land of hope and dreams"? — and then Obama comes on the stage and gives Springsteen a hug and then gives him a second needy hug.



(Video will be up soon: here.)

Photos from the dismal, dull Obama rally in Madison today.

Get ready!



Block off all the streets! The hordes are coming!



Apparently not.

Blaaaaah.... Herb Kohl... zzzzz....



Oh, my lord, it's Bruce!



(All photos by Meade, who tells me it was very subdued.)

"I kissed your sister and I kissed your mama, Forward/ Usually this time of day, I'm in my pajamas, Forward/ Let's vote for the man who got Osama/ Forward and away we go."

Sang Bruce Springsteen today in Madison, incorporating Obama's slogan/Wisconsin's motto into a makeshift lyric.

The fire officials estimated the crowd size at 18,000. A police office gave Meade the number 15,000, as I noted in an earlier post. 15,000 or 18,000, it's much less than the 30,000 or so that showed up for the Springsteenless Obama here in Madison a month ago, which was itself much less than the 80,000 people who showed up in 2004 when Bruce Springsteen appeared with John Kerry.

A disappointing turnout for the Obama rally in Madison, Wisconsin.

Personally, I'm at work, but [my husband] Meade is on the scene, where he talked to a police officer who said they'd planned for 30,000 but were estimating the crowd at 15,000. And Meade encountered a friend who said he'd heard reports that it would be a nightmare trying to park downtown, but he pulled into a parking garage and was the first car there.

The police had cordoned off a big swath of lawn on the Capitol Square for the spillover crowd, Meade told me (by phone), but there is no spillover crowd.

Here's the #ObamaMadison Twitter feed, coming from many people on the scene. They are "shoulder-to-shoulder" packed in, they say. Here's the presentation of tweets at Isthmus. I selected these:

O hai black helicopter! #obama #madison

POTUS must be close because there's a Blackhawks helicopter out my window! #obamamadison #theboss...

Kind of crazy looking at the tweets from #ObamaMadison. Just 3 blocks away and I can't even tell, except for the circling military choppers

Couldn't those olive drab helicopters have the courtesy to quiet down so we can hear the speakers? #ObamaMadison....

UPDATE: Meade phones: "It was a very subdued crowd." Did they ever use the overflow area? No. Subdued for both Obama and Springsteen, said Meade, proceeding to sing me his imitation Springsteen.

"Green Party’s presidential race rooted in Madison."

Obama's paid a lot of attention to Madison lately, but there's another presidential candidate concentrating on Madison: Jill Stein.

(And, as I said yesterday, I think Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, has a good amount of support in Madison.)

If it all comes down to Wisconsin...

It's 7 a.m. here in Wisconsin, which might just make the difference in the Electoral College, with our measly but magnificent 10 votes. I've seen various permutations of the Electoral College map — here, create your own map — and it's easy to see how Wisconsin could put Romney over the top even if he loses Ohio and Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Air Force One touched down in Madison at 2:30 a.m., and a small group of people were lined up on State Street at 6, but the line has grown in the last hour. Madison gave Obama his largest crowd of the campaign when he was here a month ago, but he was here a month ago, and that was in the afternoon in the middle of campus. Now, it's early Monday morning, a time when young people are difficult to rouse from their warm beds, and, speaking of warmth, it's 30° in Madison right now. It was a long wait in the rain for the campus speech last month.

And people must remember that you don't just get to see Obama and that other guy you might care about. (Do the young folk care about seeing Bruce Springsteen?) You have to put up with the local politicos — the mayor and so forth. Meanwhile, it's all on TV.... and has been for months. (Years?) The reason to go is not so much to see, but to be seen. Lend your body to the photograph of Obama with the Wisconsin Capitol looming in the background. As it looms, you may wonder, where was Obama when you were marching and chanting and drumming last year protesting Scott Walker? Where was Obama last spring when you dragged Scott Walker into a recall election? He expressed tepid support from afar, but declined to set foot in Wisconsin, even when he was right at the border in Minneapolis/Chicago.

Ironically, that recall election forced Republicans to develop their ground game in Wisconsin, and that's exactly what may push Mitt Romney over the top tomorrow. Here's RNC chairman Reince Priebus, yesterday on "State of the Union":

[The Democrats] haven’t been able to win in Wisconsin for a long time. They claim that the Obama machine was out during the Walker recall. We basically crushed them in Wisconsin. I have seen firsthand the difference between Obama’s rhetoric on their ground game and the reality, and the reality is they’re not as good as they think they are....

When you see that Wisconsin State Capitol in the background in today's Obama photo-ops, remember all that it symbolizes: an immense GOP victory in 2010, a huge and rude months-long uprising of the left end of the Democratic Party's target constituency (shunned by Obama himself) in 2011, and, in 2012, a decisive victory in the recall election for GOP Governor Scott Walker. What about all those Democratic voters splayed out around the GOP-dominated Capitol building? Hello? This is Madison, Wisconsin. The state Capitol building is always surrounded by Democrats. Every day, every month, every year. Madison does not control election outcomes in Wisconsin. In fact, there are an awful lot of people in Wisconsin whose idea of Madison is: This is not what Wisconsin looks like. And the people of Madison return the sentiment. We've been amusing ourselves with the saying "Madison is X square miles surrounded by reality" for a long, long time.

Obama will win by a landslide in Madison, but Madison — as we all know and have been telling ourselves for decades — is not reality.

"Live Free — Gary Johnson for President."

That was the graffiti on campus today:



(Zeus thinks the movie's about him.)

Maybe libertarianism is catching on amongst the younger people.



We walked all down State Street and around the Capitol Square to see if there were any Obama-related activities in anticipation of his visit tomorrow. We saw lots of barriers and paraphernalia getting set up...



... but no sign of any people pre-celebrating Obama. Presumably, they'll be lining up before dawn, ready to stream around the Capitol and into photo-op formation.

At Obama's Milwaukee rally, Katy Perry sang "Let's Stay Together" and then ripped off her dress...

... to reveal a tighter, shorter dress that Obama's slogan/Wisconsin's motto "Forward" written on it in big letters. That was Milwaukee. Monday Obama comes to Madison, but we get Springsteen, not Perry.

Obama, Springsteen, and Bob Dylan converge on Madison next Monday.

Obama and Springsteen are arriving as a team. Obama, sans Springsteen, was just here last month, but apparently he thinks this city needs more prompting, this time with Springsteen added. Springsteen was here in '04 with the Democratic nominee, John Kerry. And the state did, in fact, go for Kerry.

Meanwhile, Bob Dylan will be in town on the same day, not in anyone's tow and with no politicians in tow, but along with Mark Knofpler.

3 Scenes from the Obama Rally in Madison.

Meade did all the filming and editing on this one. (All I did was the text.)

Paul Ryan should come to the University of Wisconsin campus.

After Obama's big rally yesterday, I'd like to see Wisconsin's own Paul Ryan do an event at the University of Wisconsin here in Madison. I'd like it, first, to give the University a chance to demonstrate its neutrality as between the 2 parties, and, second, because we have a tradition here of "sifting and winnowing" ideas, and Paul Ryan could present the ideas that are an alternative to what Obama (and Baldwin and Pocan) are purveying, and he could do it in a way that reaches the younger audience.

I just criticized the Obama event for being a such a hardcore get-out-the-vote rally, when — to fit the university setting — it should have had more of an intellectual character, teaching students about political ideas and present-day policy issues. Show some real respect, even veneration for the academic milieu and justify trumping whatever was planned by the professors in their classrooms. I think Paul Ryan could do that. Teach conservatism and let the students continue the "fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found."

Meade goes to Obamastock.

Me, I was working yesterday, even locked out of the law school, so I didn't make it to the big political rally in the center of campus — Bascom Mall. But Meade was there, and he was really inspired. He wrote a song about his nearly ecstatic experience, and he won't stop singing. It goes like this:

I came upon a child of Obam-a
She was walking by Sterling Hall
So I asked her, "Where are you going?"
And this she told me...

"I'm going up to Bascom Mall,
I'm gonna join in a political rally
Gonna put out my two hands
Try and keep my birth control free.

We are starstruck
We're beholden
And we've got to keep ourselves in government lardon."

Then can I walk beside you?
I have come here to dialogue
And with a Flip cam, I feel like Herzog,
Artistically burning.

Well maybe it's just not our year,
And maybe, well, Yes We Can
But Tammy B and Mark Pocan
Have my stomach churning.

We are starstruck
We're beholden
And we've got to keep ourselves in government lardon.

By the time we got to Bascom,
We were thirty thousand strong
Everywhere you looked - career politicians.

And I dreamed I saw drone bombers
Chooming roof hits in the sky,
Turning into Obama Pies
O'er Bascom Nation

We are starstruck
We're beholden
And we've got to keep ourselves in government lardon.

"A trio of high-profile UW-Madison professors went public Wednesday with concerns about President Barack Obama's planned Thursday campaign rally..."

"... saying students who want to attend are unfairly being required to supply a phone number and email address to the campaign, even having to click 'I'm In' to get a free ticket at the campaign's website...."

Vince Sweeney, vice chancellor for university relations, said the university takes the concerns seriously and will respond formally but hadn't done so as of Wednesday night. In linking to the Obama campaign's registration site on the university's website, the university sought to provide as much information as possible to interested attendees, he said.

"We don't manage the (Obama) link, we're not collecting that information, and ultimately if it's a problem for those wishing to attend, it's an individual decision" whether or not to provide an email address and phone number, he said.

Sweeney said the campaign approached the university about holding the event at Bascom Hill, and the university decided it could make the site work, noting there are advantages for the university in showcasing a central attraction on campus. Obama also visited campus in 2010, that time holding a campaign rally across the street at Library Mall.

Library Mall is not the center of campus, and it was closed down later in the day. Even so, there was much hand-wringing from the administration about whether the event impinged on the University's education mission. And notably, Obama wasn't running for office in 2010. This time, it seems the University jumped at the opportunity to provide Obama, now facing an election, with the most beautiful photo-op possible, shutting down many buildings — and many classrooms — for an entire school day.

Obama's campaign will pay UW-Madison $15,000 for Thursday's rally....

What?!

... Police and other public safety costs will be borne by taxpayers. For the 2010 visit, those costs added up to about $260,000.

Wow! What a contribution to the campaign! University personnel have been working like mad on this visit, with all sorts of construction and wiring and papering over windows and so forth for the last 2 days. We've had to rearrange our work schedules, find new classrooms or methods of teaching. The cost and the disruption are immense even before the event has begun. $15,000! But supposedly we get some valuable PR out of "showcasing a central attraction on campus." What about the negative PR we get out of shunting aside our educational mission?

ADDED: I am personally messing up the hoped-for PR. To the extent that I'm turning the positive to negative, I'm subtracting value from the University. My dissent is costing the taxpayers money, and I apologize for that.

AND: More here, including maps showing the extent to which UW students and employees are excluded from our work and study places. And:

A set of guidelines released by the university Sept. 8 read “political activities are generally not allowed inside campus buildings or spaces, recreational sports facilities, athletics facilities or campus libraries.”

“Clearly it’s a campaign space, a space that’s being rented by a campaign,” said Vice Chancellor for University Relations Vince Sweeney in reaction to Mayer’s criticisms. “But it is the President of the United States.”

Rented by the campaign... for a paltry $15,000, with the huge difference in cost coming from the taxpayers.

“Having a president visit as an educational public event is one thing,” Mayer wrote. “Forcing students to declare their support for a presidential candidate in order to attend the event on campus is quite another.”...

“It’s not a perfect situation,” Sweeney said. “But overall I think the benefits outweigh some of the negatives or the disruptions or issues that some people may raise.”

Downs said when Obama visited UW-Madison just two years ago, then Chancellor Biddy Martin insisted the event not be held on Bascom and instead moved it to Library Mall.

Martin made sure to “symbolically separate the event from the University itself,” according to Downs.

Biddy Martin, you may remember, is gone, a consequence of our failure to support her in her negotiations on behalf of the University with state government, which was, at the time, dominated by Republicans against whom right-thinking Madisonians were protesting with great vigor. (The taxpayers had to foot the bill for those protests, of course.)

Prepping the University of Wisconsin campus for President Obama's visit.

Bascom Mall was a crazy construction site:



Somewhere in the background there you might be able to see the Law School

Apparently, Obama will make an entrance through the Education School:



"Please DO NOT Climb Trees."

At the top of the hill, workers — perhaps student volunteers — were assembling into groups under hand-held signs, like this one, which says "Perimeter":




And this one says "Inside Water":



Perhaps that has to do with handing out water to the audience members who are not permitted to bring water (or food).

And here we see a white sheet draped over the windows of Chadbourne Hall (a dorm), which presumably has a view of the place where the President will stand:

"The situation on Bascom Hill already is disruptive" in preparation for Obama's rally tomorrow.

Says Irene in the comments to the last post.

This morning, a worker who admonished me for "standing" behind heavy equipment when I paused to take a photograph.

When I stated that I found the situation disruptive, one of his coworkers chirped, "Obviously, a Republican."

Wow!

"[M]y reaction to President Obama’s visit has gone from unease, to mild irritation, to serious concern."

UW—Madison polisci prof Kenneth R. Mayer has 4 problems with the decision to allow the Obama campaign to hold a rally in the center of campus that will shut down many buildings for the entire day — a regular class day — tomorrow. This text is from a letter he sent to some of the people involved in the decision-making. He copied me on the letter and responded positively to my request to blog it. Here are the 4 problems:

(1) In order for students to get a ticket for this event (which doesn’t even guarantee entry), the University is requiring them to go to the Obama campaign website, provide contact information, and then click on a button that says “I’m In!” In a very real sense, we are forcing them to become participants in the campaign and express their support for the campaign. This is SOP for a campaign event, but it should not be for the University. Having a president visit as an educational public event is one thing. Forcing students to declare their support for a presidential candidate in order to attend the event on campus is quite another. Should we be in the business of helping a campaign farm thousands of email addresses?

Note: You also have to give your phone number, which for many/most students means a cell phone number, something that I think most people see as more private, since it doesn't go into the public phone directories.

(2) The location of the rally could not be more disruptive. It hardly seems appropriate to shut the central campus down for an entire day, closing offices and seriously disrupting our mission. I have several colleagues who had scheduled exams for Thursday. Surely there were other venues that would pose less disturbance.

(3) I have learned that classified staff will be required to take a vacation or personal day, arrange to work at another location on campus, or work at home. This is what pushed me into the seriously annoyed category. The UW is penalizing staff (or, at a minimum, dramatically inconveniencing them) for an event that they had no say in organizing or scheduling. That’s wrong.

(4) The University is finessing the central point of this visit. It is not a Presidential visit. It is not a Presidential speech. It is a campaign event. It is a major event when a president visits UW. It is, I’m sure you’ll agree, somewhat less major when the president comes not as a president, but as a candidate.

This is not a partisan issue (my objections would be the same if it were Romney). I think this should have been handled differently, in a way that welcomed the President but did not diminish our basic purpose.

ADDED: Ken teaches a course called "American Presidency," and you can see the subjects covered and the readings assigned here.  Here's "The Oxford Handbook of the American Presidency," which is only $33 if you go for the Kindle version.

Tammy Baldwin will appear with Obama and talk about their "shared vision of building a progressive nation from the middle class out."

At the University of Wisconsin—Madison tomorrow.

I think she's a lot more "progressive" that Barack Obama wants to look... but for present purposes — beating Tommy Thompson in the Senate race — she doesn't want to look that way either.

And yet she says things like "vision of building a progressive nation." Do her people have any idea how awful that sounds to people who are not on the left, i.e., the people she needs to convince/trick if she wants to win?

"President Barack Obama will hold a campaign rally on Bascom Hill this Thursday."

Openly announces the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

After I went to all that trouble to critique the earlier attempt to frame the visit as historical and presidential, when it was really a campaign rally.

I can't believe the University is shutting down, closing buildings such as the Law School, depriving us of the rooms for regularly scheduled classes, for an entire day, to accommodate a campaign rally. The grounds and the students are provided for a massively intrusive photo-op. Of course, the students don't have to attend. But they will. They've paid their tuition for classes, which they're not getting, and their bodies are repurposed for political exploitation.

What should a UW student do?
	Celebrate a day of no classes doing whatever they please (other than attending the rally).
	Protest the cancellation of classes.
	See the President if they like him, and do something else if they don't.
	Everyone should take advantage of this excellent opportunity and see the President.
pollcode.com free polls

Obama will displace Rodney Dangerfield...

... as the most famous person I've been able to watch in action from my office window. He will be here at the University of Wisconsin, Thursday at noon speaking on Bascom Mall, which is a lovely sloping lawn with academic buildings hemming in the space along the sides and a big old Abe Lincoln statue at the top. Smack in the middle of that space, back in the 1980s, Dangerfield directed himself in "Back to School."

WDTY's Sly confronts Wisconsin legislator Brett Hulsey about the beach incident involving 3 children...

... which led to a charge of disorderly conduct, to which he pled "no contest."

Though both Sly and Hulsey are Madison lefties — click the tags below — Sly does a tough interview, with the refrain: People are "creeped out."

Hulsey has some stock phrases he repeats: it was "a potentially dangerous situation" (a boy was splashing 2 "little girls"), he'd been out in the "extreme heat" and wanted to "cool off,"  the splashing was "wild," "I admit I made a mistake," he "startled" the boy, in "a foot of water," the police officers "didn't write down a word" of his story, and he was "flabbergasted" that they wrote him a ticket. He tries to frame the story in terms of police abuse, and Sly practically shouts him down: Then why did you plead no contest?!

Hulsey's voice sounds whiny and sporadically spikes to a high pitch. He hedges about whether he flipped the boy's innertube over, but seems to concede it in the end.

Hulsey keeps saying he was not taking photographs of the children but of the sunset, but here's the location of the beach. Would that be a sunset vantage point on July 4th? The police report doesn't seem to have even the approximate time of the incident [says the incident took place at 7:24 PM. Sunset occurred at 8:40 PM. Would children be playing by themselves in the lake at that hour? [ADDED: It wasn't 8:40, but more than an hour before sunset. I'm still surprised that children would be allowed to swim in the lake at that time (or really anytime) without closer supervision.]

(Here's the Isthmus article that Sly refers to. Here's our discussion a few days ago about the incident.)

Hulsey is the Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin state assembly — in my district. The incident occurred on July 4th, but the first we heard of the story was when the Isthmus story came out on August 29th. The primary was August 14th, and Hulsey is, conveniently, unopposed in the general election. Nice timing.

ADDED: Rereading the police report, I get the impression that Hulsey was trying to play with the children. The children said that Hulsey had his "arms up off to his sides and his mouth was wide open but making no sound" — as if he was "trying to sneak up" on the boy. According to the report, "Brett then 'shocked' [the boy] out of his inflatable so that he fell into the water." His hands touched the inflatable and the boy, and the man and the boy started splashing each other, with Hulsey saying "something to the effect of 'do you want to have a splash fight with me?'"

That sounds like a man trying to play with kids. The boy was "happy" at first, but soon felt "confused," according to one of the girls (as reported by the police), and the girl said that made her feel "strange" because she "didn't really know what he could do."

Now, that sounds awkward, and you can think about how creepy it is and whether you'd call the police if your kids told you about a man doing that (and then taking photographs). But here's the thing: If he was trying to play, why doesn't he say that? Why does he say over and over that he was dealing with "a potentially dangerous situation"?