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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank Griffin who wrote (58644)	11/3/2000 11:13:13 PM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 769667

Article...Aides admit Gore is hooked on Coke the-times.co.uk SATURDAY NOVEMBER 04 2000 DOUG MILLS/AP BY DAMIAN WHITWORTH IT MAY not be his most pressing concern but one has to wonder about the state of Al Gore’s teeth. The Vice-President is awake each day before 6am. Within half an hour he is meeting his campaign staff and cracking open his first Diet Coke. By the time he goes to bed again half a dozen or more of the sticky drinks will have been sluiced down. “Okay, so it might not be the kind of breakfast you or I would have,” says a campaign aide. “But these are high-caffeine days. He needs his fuel to get through them.” A presidential election campaign is a colossal logistical exercise mounted by an army that marches on its constantly pepped-up blood sugar levels. If Mr Gore is awake then all his staff are awake too — along with the travelling press corps, the Secret Service and the hundreds of people involved in every single event in each 19-hour day. In fact many of the travelling Gore staff are awake long before the man himself, talking to the campaign war-room in Nashville, plotting strategies to suggest to the candidate and compiling a briefing book of press cuttings and talking points that runs to more than 100 pages every day. Both candidates are trying to visit as many states as possible before election day. Mr Gore was in Missouri, Iowa and Tennessee yesterday; Mr Bush, whose schedule is slightly less insane, in Michigan and West Virginia. Every time Air Force 2 and its following press plane land, the routine is the same. A motorcade of about 30 vehicles is waiting on the runway: a limousine, or heavy sports utility vehicle for the candidate, another with an open back carrying Secret Service officers armed with machineguns, and then a long train of other security vehicles, police cars, staff minivans and four coaches carrying the press. The Vice-President then scorches across the countryside like a Roman emperor down cleared, sealed-off roads. The Secret Service and an advance team of campaign workers usually arrive at each site four days before the event takes place. The Secret Service ensures that every police officer in the area is on duty in order to keep the roads clear. The campaign workers, often in teams of just six, organise the staging of the events. Contractors are hired to build stages, set up lights, provide sound systems, confetti-blowing machines and fireworks. School cafeterias or, as in Los Angeles this week, a vacant shop, are commandeered as press-filing centres where the installation of dozens of phone lines is supervised by a phone company executive who travels permanently with the campaign. Photocopiers and faxes must be installed so that schedules and press releases can be printed off and distributed immediately to reporters. Caterers are hired to feed the press and staff. The advance team relies on scores of volunteers from the local campaign office, and unions often provide drivers and control crowds. Telephone banks are set up to call registered Democrats and pull in a crowd. For the huge rallies fliers are distributed across town and campaign officials make themselves available to local radio and television stations. Mr Gore has been using celebrities such as the rock star Jon Bon Jovi and the comedian Bill Cosby to attract an audience and get it warmed up. Music blaring across a small town ensures that eventually most people come down to find out what is going on. The smaller-scale events are invitation-only, with guests carefully screened to ensure they are sympathetic or relevant to the theme of the day. Whatever the subject of his speech Mr Gore, like Mr Bush, has to have a mix of people, young and old, black and white, standing behind him. Before he arrives the audience is given its orders. “This is a serious event not a rally, so no jumping up and down,” a campaign aide told an audience of 200 on a beach in Michigan this week. “And when you clap, take your gloves off — it makes a better sound.” Many of the events staged by the campaign are not officially staged at all. “We just decided to stop and these people were here,” a staffer said after the entire motorcade had pulled off a road in Michigan this week. Mr Gore chatted in front of the cameras with a cluster of voters who just happened to be carrying Gore-Liberman posters and be standing behind a rope line. Once the candidate has left, the focus turns to getting out the vote. The Democrats have distributed more than half a million placards in the key states, and by election day will have made 50 million phone calls to voters, sent 40 million pieces of mail and 30 million e-mails to supporters. Some 50,000 volunteers will work in those states on election day. The Republicans will have sent out 1.6 million placards, made 62 million phone calls and distributed 110 million articles of mail. There is a certain machismo about the length of the hours worked. “Our campaign consists of a lot of long days and a lot of short nights,” Chris Lehane, the Gore campaign spokesman, said. “While some candidates may look for their feather pillows, Al Gore is looking for every single undecided voter he can find.” Sometimes Mr Gore will end the day sipping a beer with his brother-in-law and best friend, Frank Hungar, but usually he calls one of the Air Force 2 stewards, or goes to the hotel minibar and requests one more can of a certain brand of cola.