The road to Rolla: Day 1
I'm on my way to Rolla, Missouri, to prepare for a special edition of The World Tonight, to be broadcast live from there on Friday in front of an audience of local voters.
Why ? Come to that, why Missouri? Two words: middle America. Neither north nor south, neither east nor west, Missouri is the perfect bellwether state: in every Presidential election since 1904 (with just one exception), Missouri voters have favoured the candidate who won the election.
Rolla is a small town in central Missouri where we hope to hear what's really on the minds of voters who often get overlooked when the media get into election mode.
What do they make of the Republican convention, which will just have ended? What do they think of John McCain's surprise running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, and her unmarried pregnant teenage daughter?
What do they think of Barack Obama and his campaign slogan: eight years (of a Republican president) is enough? Are Missourians ready to vote for a black President?
The immigration officer who greeted me at O'Hare airport in Chicago told me: "I ain't never gonna vote for a man with a name like Obama ... and there's lots of folk who think like I do." Was he typical, or an aberration?
Tonight, I'm in the small town of , on the banks of the mighty Mississippi. It was the boyhood home of Mark Twain, and is full of Twain memorabilia. Twain was anti-slavery in a pro-slavery state, and, according to the curator of the Mark Twain museum, insisted on portraying black slaves as humans with souls rather than as a white man's property.
More tomorrow, by which time I hope to be in St Louis.
Comments