SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

(CNN)– When today's rare meeting of five presidents past, present and future takes place in the Oval Office, people around the world will be wondering what it must be like for the men who are members of that tiny and exalted club.

If history is any indication, the five men in the room are themselves occasionally filled with wonder at the thought of it all.

“I recall the first time Mrs. Nixon and I went to the White House,” Richard Nixon said.

He was telling me this during a period of my life when I had set out to try to visit all the then-living former presidents. The idea was to endeavor to find out what their view of the White House was once they were no longer residing there– once they, like the rest of us, were again on the outside. Citizens.

“I was a new congressman,” Nixon said. “And they had, as every president does at the beginning of every new Congress, a reception for all the members of Congress.

“And we had very little then. A congressman, incidentally– when I entered Congress, his salary was $12,500 a year. Which we thought then was not bad. But Mrs. Nixon, she scrimped and she bought a new dress to wear to the White House. A formal.

“She said to me, 'Well, this is going to be a little hard on the budget, but this may be the only time we'll ever be there.'”

This afternoon, as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush gather privately in the White House, they will undoubtedly be aware of the public's curiosity about what they may be saying to each other. It's a curiosity about the presidency that each of them once possessed– a curiosity, once they are on the receiving end of it, that they gradually learn to accept as routine.

“When I go into a crowd or meet a stranger– you know, obviously they look at me as kind of a unique creature,” Jimmy Carter said. “'This man has lived in the White House, this man has been the highest elected official, officeholder, in the world.' But I try to overcome that– I consider it to be a handicap. Even when I was president, I was always uncomfortable with it. The fanfare and 'Hail to the Chief' and all– it made me very uncomfortable.”

Still, Carter said, people should understand that each man who has been president is a very different person. “I look on them as individualistic, the same way you would look at different news reporters or anyone else. Just having the same job doesn't mean the people who have it are the same.”

Yet parts of the job entail a way of living that the rest of us will never know. “When I was president, I didn't see a lobby for four years,” the first President Bush said to me.

He was referring to the fact that the Secret Service would, in public buildings, usher him through kitchens and locked-down passageways, for his own protection. “I almost forgot what the lobbies of buildings looked like,” he said.

When a man stops being president, he said, he rediscovers small pleasures that once were second nature to him.

“I went out to see a minor-league baseball game the other night,” he said. “The Portland [Maine] Sea Dogs. In the Eastern League. This beautiful stadium, it only holds about 6,000 people. So everyone feels real close to the game. We sat right down next to the field.”

He had an almost boyish sense of gladness in his voice, at the rediscovered joy of doing something so seemingly simple. There had been no particular reason, he said, for the trip to the ballpark– no official event connected with it.

“I just felt like seeing a ballgame,” he said, as if describing a gift beyond value.

And then there are the things that don't change, even for the men who somehow find themselves going to work in that office that is like no other.

“Do I pray?” Gerald Ford said, in response to the question I had asked him.

“Every night. Every night since I was in high school.”

He said it was the same prayer he had recited most of his life, starting when he was a boy in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“Betty and I said this prayer the first night we were sworn in. Proverbs, chapter three. 'Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not on thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.”

He never varied the words, he said– he said the prayer the same way in his bedroom in the White House as he'd said it when he was a child who never thought he would ever see the White House, much less live there.

Today, when the five current members of the club meet in the Oval Office, they will know without having to say it aloud that just by being there together, they are making history. But, then, part of their job description is that they are making history every day of their presidencies.

And chances are that, at least once in a while, each of them silently allows himself the private and fundamental thought that Gerald Ford told me was his most fervent wish:

“If I'm history, I hope it's history that's good.”

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

 
CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– On a sloppy, snowy, ice-covered day here, Barack Obama is making imminent plans to head for Hawaii, and thus end the long presidential transition period he has spent in Chicago.

What Obama leaves behind as he, with any luck, beats the weather out of here over the weekend is a town that on some level is still a little woozy over how his accomplishment– becoming the first Chicagoan in the nation's history to be elected president of the United States– has upended the city's natural political order.

On a recent evening, in a steakhouse near downtown, sitting deep in conversation at a table next to the wall were two men who kept drawing openly curious glances from the other customers during their entire meal. If this were Los Angeles, maybe Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston in a restaurant would have the magnetism to attract such star-struck stares; if this were New York, perhaps Derek Jeter and Matt Lauer would be the objects of such attention.

In Chicago, though, the men on the receiving ends of the stares were two brothers who probably wouldn't be recognized in most other towns: Bill Daley, attorney, business executive, former secretary of commerce, and his brother John, member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. It was a table for four, and the pair of empty seats invited silent speculation from the other diners: Would a third Daley brother, the mayor, Richard M., be joining his family tonight? And the final empty chair, as it inevitably does at a Daley table, reminded anyone with a long enough memory of the man who wasn't there, but seemingly somehow always is: the late Richard J. Daley, father of the boys, mayor of mayors.

He's been dead since a December day on this very week in 1976, but the city is still his, which is why the presence of Obama has been such a stylistic shock to the local political system. The president of the United States has never been considered to be the most powerful man in Chicago; the most powerful man in the world, maybe, but not in the environs of State and Madison. Generations of Chicago children grew up assuming that the most influential person in the United States was the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee, who for many years was the same person who was mayor of Chicago: the first Richard Daley.

In other cities, mayors may have pursued meetings with presidents; in Chicago, presidents pursued meetings with the mayor. What was that famous comment Robert F. Kennedy made when he was laying out plans to run for the presidency in 1968? “Daley's the ballgame.” It might not have had the same ring to it as “Change We Can Believe In,” but Kennedy knew what he was talking about.

Part of the steadiness of the natural order was the assumption that no one from Chicago– certainly not the mayor– was ever going to make a run for the presidency. Why would a man leave the mayor's office to pursue a less desirable job? And because no one from here, before Obama, was ever elected president. . .well, never before has there been the low-grade awkwardness that has accompanied the Chicago transition.

It's not a resentment– Bill Daley is helping to run the inaugural festivities in Washington– just this ethereal feeling, ever since Election Day, that the stars in the Chicago sky are slightly out of their regular alignment. There has been a president-to-be living in town for many weeks now, and once he arrives in Hawaii for vacation, and then moves into his new, if temporary, home on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, the Chicago he is leaving behind will begin to feel again like the Chicago in which he first arrived.

First, though, he has to beat the snow out of here. There is a copy of a letter in existence that, in ways that could not have been intended when it was written last month, makes it a valuable historical artifact. Sometimes when politicians in Illinois have to resign early from their jobs, it is to set up residence in federal corrections facilities. But this resignation letter had a different tone.

It was written on November 13, and was addressed to “The Honorable Rod Blagojevich, Governor, State of Illinois.”

The letter was brief, a model of economy:

“Dear Mr. Governor:

“I hereby resign effective November 16, 2008 from the United States Senate in order to prepare for my duties as President of the United States.”

In blue ink, it was signed: Barack Obama.

People leave Chicago for varying reasons, but never before for this one. It's going to take some getting used to. By the man who's leaving, and by the town in his rear-view mirror.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, left, and Barack Obama attend a 2007 rally for Chicago's 2016 Olympics bid.

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) - These days, you have to wonder whether Barack Obama would like to retract those two words he ad-libbed at the very beginning of his victory speech in Grant Park - the two words that didn't appear in his prepared text.

Those two words seemed so innocuous at the time:

"Hello, Chicago!"

This week it would be hard to blame him if he is counting down the seconds until he can say goodbye to Chicago. "Change We Can Believe In" was an inspiring and highly successful campaign slogan, but this is a city that, in the ways that really count, never changes, and a man can grow old and embittered waiting for it to.

The legal and political questions whirling around the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, will play themselves out in time. The nation, most of whose citizens had never heard his name before this week, will eventually turn its attention to other news stories.

And Chicago?

Full Story

Chicago, once in the glow of Obama's victory, now has a cloud over it, Greene says.

Award-winning writer Bob Greene rode CNN's Election Express across the country in the final weeks of the campaign before the Election Express parked in Chicago.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) – Well, that was quick.

On Election Night in Chicago, people in the immense crowd in Grant Park were talking about how the victory of Barack Obama might do the impossible: change forever the international political image of Illinois, make the world forget about the corruption that has for so long been associated with politics in the state, and particularly with politics in Chicago.

So much for that.

That was a warm and balmy November night in Grant Park - which in itself should have told you something: the shirtsleeves-in-November feeling had a when-pigs-fly quality to it - but this week there is sleet and wind and snow, a Chicago December week fit for neither man nor beast, which is to say: the usual, the expected. And in the federal courthouse just a few blocks from the Grant Park scene of civic pride and celebration, the weather had changed in more than the meteorological sense.

Full story

Scott Olson/Getty Images

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– You wonder if he's getting used to the sound of it yet.

“Mr. President-elect,” Hillary Clinton said to him this week, “thank you for this honor.”

You wonder if he has begun to take it in stride.

“Thank you, President-elect Obama, for the honor that you have bestowed upon me,” Eric Holder, nominated to be attorney general, said to him.

The election was not ancient history– four weeks ago today, when the Tuesday sun was still in the sky and the polling places were still open, the nation did not know for certain who would win the presidency.

But as Barack Obama introduced his national security team here this week, the words directed at him tumbled over each other:

“President-elect Obama, I am honored by your confidence in me,” Janet Napolitano said.

“I will be honored to serve President-elect Obama,” Robert Gates said.

Joe Biden, whether inadvertently or on purpose, skipped, on at least two occasions, the future-looking part of the phrase– he dropped the “elect.”

“Well, Mr. President,” Biden said, “you've assembled quite a team.”

And, referring to that team:

“I have a long relationship, as the president does. . . .”

Biden wasn't talking about George W. Bush.

But even as Obama is becoming accustomed to his new station in life– if anyone ever truly does become accustomed to the presidency– his own words, and their tone, continued their transformation from when he was a candidate running for office.

They're subdued now– they tend to be somber and careful.

Less than two years ago, on the day he announced his candidacy south of here in Springfield, Illinois, he said:

“I'm fired up!”

Words like that are no longer necessary.

That day, he made a comparison with another politician who had once worked in Springfield:

“But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible. . . .”

Others make the Lincoln comparisons for him now– it has come up hundreds of times in analyses of Obama's so-called team of rivals.

And then there is the imagery of the oceans.

On the night he sewed up the Democratic nomination, in a speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, he told the crowd that he hoped that:

“. . .this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. . . .”

His reference to the oceans this week was considerably more grave:

“As we learned so painfully on 9-11, terror cannot be contained by borders, nor safety provided by oceans alone.”

In the aftermath of last week's carnage in India, he stood on the stage in Chicago this week with two people who had thought that they, not he, should be president– Senators Clinton and Biden– and while the campaign has ended, the war against terrorism that he will soon be in charge of has not, and will not.

I keep, as a solemn memento, a copy of a cable that was once given to me– a cable sent, in 1945, by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers to the generals and admirals who served under him. The cable was in all capital letters:

“FORMAL SURRENDER OF THE JAPANESE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT BY JAPANESE IMPERIAL GENERAL HEADQUARTERS AND ALL JAPANESE AND JAPANESE CONTROLLED ARMED FORCES WHEREVER LOCATED WAS SIGNED ON THE BATTLESHIP MISSOURI IN TOKYO BAY AT 0908 ON SEPTEMBER 2ND 1945.”

There will be no such cable to announce the end of the war on terrorism, because there will be no one from the other side to sign a surrender. The other side does not fly a flag.

In the weeks after September 11, 2001, I was at dinner with John Glenn, and he told me that he worried about the same quandary:

“All the other wars we had, the object was to win the battlefield,” Glenn said. “Use tanks, use planes, take their capital, and declare victory. War's over.

“But this. . .this is like the wind. This is like fighting the wind. It doesn't fit within borders. You can hit them, but they'll pop up somewhere else.

“This doesn't seem to be the kind of war where you can look forward to them signing a surrender on the battleship Missouri. . . .”

This week in Chicago Robert Gates said:

“I am deeply honored that the president-elect has asked me to continue as secretary of defense. . . .”

The president-elect stood a few feet away, on the same stage, and you wonder if, for him, the words will ever sound routine.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– For all the words that President-elect Barack Obama has spoken at news conferences here during the last several days, there are two specific words uttered by Obama this month that will resonate in town longer than any of the others.

Most of his recent words– appointments of White House advisers and staff members, discussions of his potential cabinet, analyses of the economy– have been, of necessity, on the dry and formal side.

Yet the two unforgettable words, at least in the ears of people who live around here, were spoken by Obama earlier in November. They were a combination of words that no winning presidential candidate in the history of the nation had used to greet his supporters on an Election Night.

You won't find the words in the prepared text of Obama's Election Night speech. They weren't included.

They were added by Obama himself at the last moment, and they were the first words he said in public as president-elect.

Check the tape– you'll find it:

“Hello, Chicago!”

And– Chicago being Chicago, a city that, over the generations, has learned not to trust any piece of happy news– the immediate and involuntary instinct, upon hearing those words, could be summed up in another brief phrase:

What's the catch?

The “Chicago” part, no one was doubting. Obama is a citizen of Chicago, he was standing in a park in downtown Chicago, the counting of the ballots had made it official: he was the first Chicagoan to be elected president of the United States.

So if the “Chicago” in “Hello, Chicago!” was taken on faith, then the word to be examined and looked upon with skepticism was the other word:

The “Hello.”

Did it really mean “goodbye”? People who live in Chicago have a way of assuming that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and so the thought began to occur, in the minds of some, that if someone from Chicago becomes president, that may mean that soon enough he'll decide not to be from Chicago anymore.

Part of this is inevitable and a product of logistics– the president lives in the District of Columbia, not the County of Cook– but other parts of it have long precedent in the annals of Chicago's fickle relationship with hometown men and women of achievement. We'll get into some of that after the Thanksgiving holiday.

For today, though, the built-in ambivalence about Chicagoans who attain something that seems too grand to be fully absorbable can be illustrated by the comments of two people who were born here, and who we met as they walked together near where we have parked the bus during these transition months.

Kim and Mike Clay think that now that Chicago has a president of the United States, the world may start to think of it differently.

Kim Clay, 40, was born in Albany Park, which is a Chicago neighborhood, and not a suburb. Her husband, Mike Clay, 41, was born in Brighton Park, which also is a Chicago neighborhood, and not a suburb. They now live in Spring Grove, Illinois, near the Wisconsin border, but the city of Chicago is still marinated into every syllable of every sentence they speak.

Kim Clay said that, for her whole life, wherever in the world she has gone, people have associated Chicago with three things:

“Gangs. Mobsters. Capone.”

She said that now that Chicago has a president of the United States, the world may start to think of it differently.

But then– this was built into her Chicago genes– she added another word:

“Unless. . . .”

Unless what?

“Unless Obama screws up,” she said.

It's always there– that eternal Chicago impulse to presume, even on the loveliest and sunniest day, that a two-thousand-pound safe is about to drop out of the sky and onto your head.

Her husband said that, in his experience, people around the country and around the world have a lasting picture of Chicago:

“The White Sox, the Cubs, and corruption.”

With President-elect Obama, whom he considers “a regular guy from the city,” he said the opportunity exists to give the town a completely revised stereotype– one that is victorious and transcendent and new.

He paused.

“Unless. . . .,” he said.

Unless what?

“You know,” he said.

No– what?

“Unless some of the people in Obama's administration bring corruption in with them,” he said.

He and his wife shrugged at each other.

In Chicago, no day is so pretty that you can't imagine a freezing blizzard forming just over the horizon. And December– there's no getting around it– arrives next week.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

Charles Shenk, Bob Sirkus, and Michael Stern enjoy a football game

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– There were a couple of groups of guys in Chicago during the last seven days, all while the Barack Obama transition efforts were taking shape in a federal office building downtown.

One group of guys was gathered in room 1101 in the Sofitel Hotel near Rush Street. Their names were Charles Shenk, Bob Sirkus and Michael Stern; men in their early 60s, they were in town with their wives for a wedding, but the wives had gone out to lunch and had then gone shopping, whatever shopping now constitutes in this economy. The men weren’t budging from room 1101.

None of the three are political professionals, but all had been intensely, even passionately, interested in the presidential campaign; one of the men, utterly indifferent in past years to the electoral process, had surprised himself and his wife when, watching the Grant Park Election Night speech on television back in central Ohio, he began to cry because of the emotion of the historic moment.

On this day, in room 1101, he looked as if he might cry again. “Don’t drop it!” he wailed as an Ohio State receiver bobbled a pass attempt. He and his two friends– along with CNN Election Express producer Josh Rubin and I– were watching the Ohio State-Illinois football game together, and every time Josh and I attempted to discuss presidential transition team developments, the men shot us looks that made us think that if they could hit a “mute” button and silence us, they would.

Sen. John McCain and President-elect Barack Obama met at Obama's transition office in Chicago Monday.

The other group of men in Chicago during the last seven days was Barack Obama and John McCain. McCain had come to town for his post-election courtesy call/peace-and-strategy session, and outsiders allowed into the room briefly to take photographs were not able to hear much of what the two men were saying.

Some of what they could hear was this:

“I noticed that yesterday’s football game. . . " McCain said to Obama.

“Oh, see there. . . " Obama began to reply.

Obama’s team, the Chicago Bears, had not done well against the Green Bay Packers; McCain’s team, the Arizona Cardinals, with quarterback Kurt Warner, had defeated the Seattle Seahawks.

“. . was not greeted with. . . .” McCain said.

“I tell you what,” Obama said, “Arizona’s. . .they’ve got a real– Warner’s turned out to be unbelievable.”

“Turned out to be quite a performer,” McCain said. “Let’s hope for all of us. . . .”

Now. . .one of the reasons, perhaps the primary reason, that Obama and McCain were talking about football while the reporters and cameras were in the room was that as long as they were talking about sports, they wouldn’t have to answer any sensitive political questions. It was a time-honored photo-opportunity filibuster.

But it is Obama’s good fortune that his temporary athletic interests that day were right in tune with the interests of the men in room 1101 of the Sofitel, and countless others across the nation. One of the things about these weeks before the inauguration– you can call it a honeymoon if you want, but its meaning exceeds that– is that Americans are quite willing to leave the day-to-day dramas of the long election campaign behind, and to gratefully think about other matters. The who's-going-to-win-and-who’s-going-to-lose aspect, a daily political stock market of its own for more than a year, was resolved on schedule, and suddenly the nation has its attention span back.

“Was his foot in bounds?” Bob Sirkus said heatedly in room 1101 of the Sofitel.

This is one more piece of grand good luck for Obama: he has the luxury of building his cabinet and staff while the country is eager to look the other way. Sure, people will pay attention when the cabinet members are formally announced. But the explanations in today’s newspapers that Penny Pritzker has taken herself out of consideration for U.S. secretary of commerce are destined to barely register with football fans who are already concentrating on tomorrow’s Ohio State-Michigan, or Texas Tech-Oklahoma, or Penn State-Michigan State games, or with movie-ticket-holders who are excited about the opening weekend of “Twilight."

Thanksgiving dinners are about to be planned, purchased and cooked; families will soon be gathering for an economy-challenged Christmas; in the weeks leading up to Inauguration Day the college Bowl games will be played, and the contenders for Super Bowl teams will emerge from the pack in the NFL.

All of this is a good thing for Obama and his staff. Any distraction, right now, is a blessing. During the election season, distractions that lured the eyes and ears of America away from the campaigning were lamented– if people were going to the movies or out to dinner on a Wednesday night in October, then they weren’t going to be watching a presidential debate. A political sales call, hoping to close the deal, was being wasted, at least in that one home.

Now that the contest has a winner, President-elect Obama knows that the nation will give him its full attention only when and if something goes wrong. That’s honeymoon enough; that’s enough breathing room to try to get some work begun.

“Warner’s turned out to be unbelievable,” he said to McCain.

“Turned out to be quite a performer," McCain said– two men, like the rest of the United States, in a different place now than they were a month ago.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK/AFP/Getty Images

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– As Barack Obama marks time here and frets about the sinking economy before his move to the White House, he faces a peculiar and striking dilemma on the financial front:

The one segment of American business that is booming is the Barack Obama business.

Everything with his face or his name on it is flying off retail shelves. But he can’t take advantage of it– a president is not permitted to profit personally from the sale of his own image.

Yet a case can be made that, were Obama to take his name and likeness and sign their licensing rights over to U.S. industries that are in deep trouble, he might be able to save those corporations.

A joke, of course.

Sort of.

When the chief executives of the Big Three automakers went before Congress yesterday and today and all but begged for financial assistance, it was difficult to look at General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner and not want to point out to him:

GM has a ready-made solution. The company did away with its Oldsmobile line four years ago, because the brand had become unfashionable. Just bring it back and, with the incoming president's permission, call it the Obamamobile. The way things are going these days in the Obama business, the highways would soon be jammed with them. Foreign carmakers would cower.

Obama has already demonstrated his ability to be a one-man stimulus package. The newspaper business, which has been hearing mournful news about itself for so long that it has started to half-believe it lives under a permanent cloud, was caught by surprise when readers began lining up the day after the presidential election, clamoring to purchase sold-out copies of the “Obama Wins” editions. Those three beautiful words were uttered at newspaper plants across the U.S.: “Start the presses!”

Same with the book-publishing business. There have been predictions that this will be a dreary holiday season for booksellers, but a bright spot is turning out to be books about (and by) Obama– books that are already in the stores, and yet-to-be-written books whose authors are fervidly being signed to contracts.

The thing about the Obama business boom is that it has gotten so widespread that people think you’re pulling their legs when you talk about the details. The other day we reported here that Topps, the baseball-card company, is preparing a set of Barack Obama trading cards. Some readers thought we were being satirical. We weren’t– it’s true.

(It’s like the people on the opposing political side who accused Obama of measuring his face for Mount Rushmore before he even is sworn in. What they couldn’t have foreseen is what has happened in the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda: the prime minister, W. Baldwin Spencer, has proclaimed his intention to take his nation’s highest point, which is called Boggy Peak, and rename it Mount Obama.)

So if the incoming president is losing sleep at night thinking of ways to turn the economy around, all he has to do to find the answer is look in the mirror.

There’s nothing too outlandish that you can rule it out. For example:

I was going to suggest, as a too-ridiculous-to-believe proposal, that in order to raise funds for the government, Obama should take U.S. currency, arrange to have his face printed on it, and then sell the money to citizens at multiples of face value.

But if you’ve been watching television commercials lately, you know that someone has already thought of it. Those Obama commemorative inaugural dollar coins, face value $1, are being sold– for a limited time– at a bargain TV rate of $9.95 apiece (plus $4.95 shipping and handling).

Offer valid only while supplies last.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK/AFP/Getty Images

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– Here’s the thing about honeymoons:

One of their defining aspects is that the rest of the world is supposed to leave you alone.

Right.

Chicago in November is hardly the place most honeymooners would choose for their little piece of paradise, but every incoming president is granted a honeymoon period, and for his, Barack Obama is here– either in his home on the South Side, or in his transition office downtown, where John McCain is scheduled to visit with him today.

A cold snap has hit the city– no surprise there: when historians someday look back upon Obama’s charmed political year of 2008, one of the eyebrow-raising facets will be that warm and balmy November Election Night scene in Grant Park; no one has that kind of good luck, but Obama did– and McCain’s friend Joe the Plumber might do well to come along with him here today, because by tonight there may be frozen pipes to deal with all over town.

Obama’s pre-White House honeymoon in Chicago has been festooned with several features most new presidents don’t receive, and each is symbolic of the unusual amount of goodwill with which he is taking office.

For one, the Topps trading card company– the people who first became famous for packaging baseball cards with brittle pink slabs of bubble gum, and wrapping them in waxy paper for sale to eager children– is issuing a series of Obama trading cards. The company that once sold colorful cardboard images of Moose Skowron and Minnie Minoso has determined that there is money to be made in the booming Barack Obama market– a good indicator that his appeal, at least for now, goes well beyond that of most political men.

And both Chicago downtown daily newspapers have instituted a feature that, even the last time a new president took office, might not have occurred to anyone. Readers who have posed for snapshots with Obama over the years have been invited to upload those pictures to the newspapers’ online sites; the photos are then displayed for all the world to see.

Computer technology has advanced enough since the last change in presidential administrations to make this an easy process for the people in the photographs. Scores of men and women have uploaded their images already; it is fascinating to see the close-to-identical Obama grin in all those pictures, pictures which once would have remained attached with magnets to family refrigerators, or tucked into wallets, or kept in the top drawers of desks.

It’s too early to guess whether the public dissemination of these Obama-and-me snapshots will make them seem more special, or less. The charm inherent in posing for photos with celebrities has always been the illusion the pictures provide– an illusion with a thin veneer, granted, but a pleasant illusion nonetheless– that the private citizen in the photo with the star once had a we’re-sort-of-good-pals relationship, or at least moment, with the luminary.

The uploaded I’m-with-Obama pictures provide a telling vantage point that reveals not what it must be like to be the regular person in the photo, but what it must be like to be Obama. In the pictures, he is almost without exception wearing that winning smile of his, often leaning toward the other person, sometimes allowing an arm to be thrown around him. Which makes sense, of course; when a politician agrees to pose for a photo, it would hardly be logical for him to scowl or recoil. Still, to see all those snapshots gives an inadvertent glimpse into the daily life of the sought-after one– the one destined to be stuck to all those refrigerator doors, next to the grocery lists.

The honeymoon parallels can be stretched too far– there’s always the analogy of the bride who doesn’t want to be seen until she strides down the aisle, and you think of Obama’s reluctance to attend the economic-crisis meeting of world leaders over the weekend because he’s not officially in the White House yet– but that falls apart because your typical bride doesn’t appear on “60 Minutes” before the vows are said.

This particular honeymoon period, though, does seem different than most, and John McCain can be excused today if, behind his smile, he asks himself how on earth he ended up not in Arizona in November, but sitting around Chicago. And if photos are taken, he can compare them with all the others of people who have passed in and out of the life of the next president.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

Doug, Eric, and Vickie Stanton in Millennium Park (Josh Rubin/CNN)

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– Mixed messages:

“I've always thought that Chicago is the number-one city in the world,” said Doug Stanton, 66, visiting from South Carolina.

“This should make even more people want to come and take a look,” said his wife, Vickie, 64.

“I was here in the mid-1990s, and Chicago felt like it was in a slump,” said their son, Eric, 36. “It feels different now. I think that this probably has something to do with it.”

The “this” he was talking about was the election of Barack Obama, of Chicago, to the presidency. After months of rolling through different cities just about every day, our bus is now lingering in one place: Millennium Park, in downtown Chicago. We're here for the transition, because Obama, most of the time, is here.

Which is the message the world is receiving: Chicago, home of Obama, is now the political home of all things powerful and urgent.

There is another message this week, though, being heard more quietly even as visitors to Chicago talk about the high spirits of these pre-inauguration days.

“As the president-elect himself announced last Friday. . .,” the tinny, distant voice said through the telephone receiver.

The voice was being listened to in political and news-organization offices around Chicago. The event was a piped-in transmission of a briefing that was being held in Washington.

The voice belonged to John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of Obama's transition team. He was saying that there will be some 450 people employed to work on the transition, and that the budget will be around $12 million. And that most of the activity will take place in Washington.

“What the president-elect is doing is taking advice from his advisers. . .,” Podesta's disembodied voice was saying, and more important than the words was the implication behind them: that the hatched-in-Chicago, making-it-up-on-the-fly part of the Obama story is about to end, and the firmly-entrenched-in-Washington part is about to commence. The play-it-as-it-lays feeling and flow of the presidential campaign is officially a thing of the past.

“We're taking a look at a variety of options. . .,” Podesta's voice said. The very tone– measured, careful, dry-as-chalk-dust prose instead of soaring Obama-style poetry– was a reminder that the freewheeling energy of the campaign, with the candidate from Chicago talking exuberantly many times on many stages every day to cheering crowds across the country, has mostly been replaced by others speaking for him, and doing so in the bland, nuts-and-bolts vocabulary of governance, not of vote-gathering.

“We intend to move with all due speed,” said Podesta, who grew up in Chicago himself (Lane Tech, Class of '67), but who long ago became a permanent citizen of political Washington.

Nothing wrong with any of this– it would feel off-key if Obama were to be showing up at scattered places all day and all night now, making high-decibel, smiling, sky's-the-limit promises, and knocking the Republicans. That's who he was two weeks ago; this week he is president-elect of the United States.

Yet even as visitors to Chicago talk enthusiastically about being in the place where Obama lives, they are also in the place that, very soon, will be where he used to live. After January 20, he, too, will become, literally and figuratively, mostly a voice arriving from across the miles, as Podesta's was now.

“. . .fundamentals of policy development and coordination,” Podesta, graduate school seminar in his syntax and delivery, was saying out of the telephone line.

Richard Degneau & Linda Giannotti (Josh Rubin/CNN)

In Millennium Park, Richard Degneau, 42, of Port St. Lucie, Florida, said: “So many people watched Obama's speech from Grant Park on Election Night– I think they'll want to come to Chicago to see the place for themselves, with their own eyes.”

His mother, Linda Giannotti, 61, said: “People will want to come here just because he's here.”

And he is, for now. During Podesta's meeting with reporters in Washington, he said that most of the business of the transition would take place right there, near the Potomac, but that announcements of major appointments– cabinet positions and the like– would be made by Obama himself, probably in Chicago.

Someone in Washington– in Chicago, you could half-hear the muffled question over the conference-call line– asked Podesta if that meant “we have to go out there next week.”

“Out there” meaning: here. Chicago.

“We'll try to give you as much advance guidance as we can,” Podesta's voice said.

The trips to out here will end soon enough. “This is really exciting, just being here,” said Richard Degneau, in Millennium Park, enjoying it while he can.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– When John McCain talks to Jay Leno tonight, maybe he will discuss whether he watched on television President-elect Barack Obama's Monday visit to the White House.

Or maybe the subject won't come up.

Today is Veterans Day, so expect part of McCain's appearance to be poignant. But he will undoubtedly also be funny and charming; you don't choose the “Tonight” show for your first post-election-defeat interview if you don't plan to be at least a little lighthearted. And McCain, through friends and staff members, is already putting out the word that he's doing just fine.

If he doesn't completely mean that, it's understandable. The prize he wanted so badly belongs to someone else.

But if you somehow were able to speak to him, you might point out:

He will end up having won more than 57 million votes for president during last week's election. He can take heart in the fact that 57 million Americans got out of bed last Tuesday, changed their schedules around, in some cases went out into foul weather, all so they could cast their ballots for him. Fifty-seven million votes is more than Ronald Reagan, on his best night, ever received; 57 million votes is more than Richard Nixon earned in his landslide over George McGovern. Lyndon Johnson never received 57 million votes; neither did Bill Clinton.

But the nation was smaller then, and this year 57 million wasn't even enough to make it a close contest.

The bus in which we crossed the country during the campaign is parked in Chicago during the transition, with its satellite-transmission dish aiming upward; if the election had come out the other way, we would be in Arizona. Barack Obama visited the White House this week; John McCain will visit Leno.

Senator McCain, no less than President-elect Obama, is in the midst of a transition period. And if he thinks the pain will ever completely go away. . . .

Well, take it from four pretty good authorities: it doesn't.

“In terms of speaking to former presidents,” Obama famously said at his press conference here last week, “I have spoken to all of them that are living.”

I set out to do that same thing, some years ago– for a book project, I set out to try to talk with all the former presidents who were at that time alive.

And the one thing I found out for certain was that, even for men who had reached that exalted level the rest of us will never attain, the hurt of having the presidency taken away is one that doesn't end. Ever.

“I thought I had earned another four years,” Gerald Ford told me. “I had looked forward to it. . . .”

Years after the defeat, he could cite numbers and percentages: “You know, we came from 33 points behind, and the day of the election we were even in the polls. And then to lose. If we had carried Ohio– where we lost by 11,000 votes out of four million– and if we had carried either Hawaii, which we lost by a few thousand, or Delaware. . . .”

But he didn't carry those states, and Jimmy Carter won.

Only his wife, children and closest friends knew just how awful he felt, Ford said: “I never let it out. It's not my nature.”

Carter, when he allowed me to accompany him to a speech he was making at Emory University in Atlanta, said, without prompting, to the assembled students and faculty:

“I would like to point out that I'm one of you. I've been a professor at Emory now since 1982. I reached this lofty position, thanks to Ronald Reagan, four years earlier than I planned. . . .”

The first President Bush told me that, although he sometimes wanted to get in touch with the household and kitchen staff members he had gotten to know when he was chief executive, “It's a little awkward, calling during the day to the White House after you're no longer president.” He said that during the campaign in which Clinton defeated him, “I kept being told, 'Everybody else has been on MTV, you gotta show 'em you can communicate with the youth.'. . .”

In a losing campaign, he said he realized in retrospect, “What you feel like on certain days is a slow-moving target.”

And Nixon, who lost his presidency in a way no one has before or since, said, of that moment on the White House lawn in the doorway of the Marine helicopter when he waved goodbye:

“I don't know. It's hard to recapture it all. At the time, I was frankly so physically and emotionally exhausted that I really didn't have any profound thoughts. I mean, I knew I was leaving, and that was that.”

So if the men who became president, and who then lost the office, were still feeling wistfulness and tinges of hurt years later, the lesson is probably that it's an ache that will always be present. The lesson is not to expect it to disappear. There's no transition plan that will override that.

McCain will almost certainly be good with Leno tonight, a week to the day from when he lost the presidency. He will hear applause and supportive laughter.

Then in January he will be expected to sit with his fellow senators in the Inauguration Day audience for the swearing-in of the new president.

And you can bet that countless cameras will be trained on his face, searching for any betrayal of what is going on inside him.

Fifty-seven million votes, he received last week.

It won't matter.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

US President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle leave Spiaggia restaurant in Chicago, Illinois. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– The leavetaking begins today.

It’s a pretty good time to be in Chicago if your name is Barack Obama, but today he and his wife depart for their visit to the White House, and the countdown to the president-elect’s real farewell has already begun.

Over the weekend people on North Michigan Avenue were pausing in the frigid air at the corner where it intersects with Oak Street, and were staring up at the windows of a restaurant that has been there for many years, yet has never been the object of this kind of general curiosity.

It is a fixture on the corner– Spiaggia is its name, and although it sounds like an import from old Europe, it was opened not by a famous chef from Naples, Italy, but by Larry Levy from Ladue, Missouri, by way of Northwestern University– and the reason it was receiving long gazes was that Barack and Michelle Obama had dined there Saturday night.

Those who have also eaten there in the past were wondering aloud: Did Senator and Mrs. Obama sit in the main restaurant, or the more casual café down the hallway? Early news reports varied. But the fact that there even were news reports about the dinner– news reports sent with some urgency around the world– was a sign that Chicago, at least until January 20, has at this late point in its long civic history become a center of international attention in a way it has not quite seen before, and it has seen a lot.

And if this feels bizarre for the city, think how it must feel for the family in the middle of all of it. Across the Atlantic Ocean, political analysts over the weekend were deciphering what it signified that British prime minister Gordon Brown spent ten minutes on the phone with Obama, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy got a reported 30 minutes. Was there meaning in this? Could it be attributed only to the language difference, and the possible need for translation? As recently as 2004 Obama was hanging around downstate Springfield, Illinois, as one of 177 state legislators, and now the political giants of Europe were competing for bragging rights over how much phone time he allotted to them.

Newborn babies, or so it was said, were being named not just for Obama, but for his wife and children. On the AOL home page over the weekend, the main news story carried the headline: “Who Can Beat Barack Obama?” It referred to the Republicans’ chances in the 2012 presidential election. Never mind that Obama has not even been inaugurated. Never mind that he doesn’t even live in Washington yet.

Never mind that, a week ago today, he didn’t know for certain that he would win the presidency.

Things change exceedingly quickly; the warm and glorious weather in Grant Park on Election Night last Tuesday is gone, and snow flurries drifted over the Chicago Bears’ loss to the Tennessee Titans in Soldier Field Sunday. The real estate market in the United States is lousy, but the Obama family isn’t looking to buy; the residence to where he is going for today's visit is just the most exalted version of temporary corporate housing: the executives from out of town who stay there for four or eight years at a time may get used to it, may even grow to love it, but it can never be theirs.

They don’t even carry a front-door key in their pocket when they go out.

An observant writer could spin quite a moving tale about what it is like to be the person in the center of all this, but of course Obama is an observant writer, a fine and eloquent one, and maybe when this is all over he will let his readers know. In the meantime, his dinners are news, and soon he will be gone from Chicago, but for now there sure do seem to be a lot of helicopters around here.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– For President-elect Barack Obama, there are four transitions going on at once.

If you listened closely, you could hear each of them touched upon at his press conference here as the week ended.

The first transition is the traditional one– the changeover from an old administration to a new one.

“Now, the United States has only one government and one president at a time,” Obama said to the gathered reporters. “And until January 20th of next year, that government is the current administration. I have spoken to President Bush. . . .”

But it is the other three transitions– the ones specific to Obama– that carry the most potential fascination.

There is the transition from Obama, the candidate whom the world had gotten to know during the campaign, to Obama, the man who will be president of the United States.

The same human being fills both roles. But there is– there has to be– at least the slightest tonal difference.

His Nancy Reagan/séance comment at the news conference is the example everyone is talking about this weekend. Had Obama the candidate said the same words, those words might have floated into the air and quickly evaporated. But when the 44th president of the United States says them. . . Well. You saw.

Yet there were less dramatic, but equally telling, instances of this. As Obama began the news conference, he said:

“This morning we woke up to more sobering news about the state of our economy.”

It was the “we” that made the difference.

The “we”– had he spoken the same sentence a week earlier– might have been construed as referring to his campaign, or his supporters. A week ago, he spoke only for them.

But at his first news conference as president-elect, the “we” implicitly referred to the United States of America. Even before Inauguration Day, Obama is speaking for the nation. For every day of his presidency, the word “we” will be all-inclusive.

The next transition is the one Americans themselves will undergo, as they gradually make the adjustment to who Obama now is.

As recently as the beginning of 2004, if Obama wanted to speak to reporters, he was more than willing to go visit them, individually. Here are some names that help explain the change since then:

Dan Hynes. Blair Hull. Maria Pappas. Gery Chico. Nancy Skinner. Joyce Washington.

They may not sound familiar to you, but as the 2004 Illinois Democratic primary campaign for the U.S.
Senate nomination played out, those were the other six men and women who were in the field with Obama. And Obama was by no means the best known of them.

So the very sight and feel of Friday's internationally televised formal press conference was a reminder of just how much has been altered, and how quickly.

Then there is the transition that Obama, and Chicago, will be going through. The city is taking great pride in the fact that, for the first time in its history, one of its citizens has been elected president.

But the inevitable separation has already begun. Obama has lived in a number of places during his life, and Chicago is only one of them. He will soon enough be from here, but not of here. He's leaving– for how long, no one can be certain.

You could hear a hint of this as he called upon a Chicago newspaperman at the press conference.

“Give a local, hometown guy a little bit of time,” Obama said in selecting the reporter to ask a question.

It wasn't so long ago that the local, hometown guy hoping for a little bit of time– a little bit of the public's attention– was Obama himself. He will be leaving that world behind.

At the very least, Chicago will soon be accepting the idea that Obama has departed on a very long business trip.

“I'm confident that a new president can have an enormous impact,” Obama said during the news conference. “That's why I ran for president.”

"Ran.”

Past tense.

The running is over now. That part of his life, for now, is finished.

Both he, and we, are on our way to somewhere else. It's a transitional time.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– Quite a week. Here are ten pieces of supporting evidence:

1. If my reading of statistics is correct– never a certainty when my favorite truck-stop dining companion of 2008, Bill Schneider, is off the bus– Barack Obama did something perhaps even more impressive this week than becoming the first African-American to win the presidency.

He also became the person who, in the entire history of the United States, won the most number of popular votes in a presidential election.

Granted, the population grows between each election year, thereby increasing the total possible number of votes. But still. No one has ever received more votes than Obama did this week.

2. To put the above into a little perspective:

In 2000, the year the man whom Obama is replacing as president, George W. Bush, was elected, Obama was defeated in a congressional primary– a primary– by Bobby Rush, who first came to local prominence in the 1960s as a founder of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Eight years later, not only is Obama president-elect, but no one– not Lyndon Johnson, not Ronald Reagan, not Bill Clinton– has ever received more votes on an Election Night.

3. You know what it looks like when football teams run onto the field between long parallel lines of high-kicking cheerleaders?

That’s what it looked like for pedestrians walking north on Michigan Avenue from Grant Park after midnight on Election Night, except instead of cheerleaders there were twin lines of Chicago police officers, and they weren’t doing high kicks.

Chicago felt like Pleasantville. No one leaving Grant Park– a place that has, from time to time, had its problems on big nights– was going to be mugged, panhandled, or even spoken to impolitely by strangers. Mayor Richard M. Daley desires nothing more than for Chicago to be awarded the 2016 Olympic Games, and trouble in or around Grant Park this week could have ended that dream.

Just thinking about this week‘s police overtime costs is enough to make you dizzy.

4. We know who the winners and the losers were this week.

But cheer for a moment for the children of an elementary school in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, whose building we drove past in the Election Express in the early days of our journey through the nation.

They declared to their town, on a banner across the front of their school, that they had so far read a total of well over a thousand books.

By now, the students have undoubtedly read even more. They never hear applause for their diligence. But please, if you will, silently send yours their way.

5. Speaking of books, a pretty good rule of thumb is that books about losing presidential campaigns are losers themselves– no one wants to read about the candidate who didn’t make it to the White House.

But this year, if I may predict: the single best political book to come out of the 2008 campaign will be one that is written about what happened to John McCain– and why.

Shakespeare is not available, but he would have gotten it right.

6. On a serious– more than serious– note:

Some of the things we heard said about Barack Obama, in big cities and small towns as we traveled toward Election Day, were– to use a word whose very definition is ambiguous these days– unprintable.

And even as he was on the stage in Grant Park, thanking his supporters, it was impossible to wash away the memory of those words. They are enough to keep a person awake far into the night.

7. On a related note:

Maybe the most chilling words we heard at Grant Park on Election Night, as we interviewed people arriving for the event, came from an African-American voter named James Lewis, 28, who had proudly cast his ballot for Obama.

We asked him: Did he believe that, by the end of the night, Obama would be the next president?

“I won’t believe it even if he does win,” Lewis said, a tinge of sadness in his voice. “I won’t believe he’s president until he is actually inaugurated.”

We asked what he meant by that.

“Just what it sounds like,” he said. “I worry. I hope he is elected tonight, but I won’t believe he is president until the moment I see him sworn in.”

And then he headed into the park, to await the results.

8. This conviction has been building for weeks now, as we have documented in increments as we traveled the country, but today it is time to make it official.

The order of finish for duos this election year, in descending rank, are:

First place, Obama and Biden.

Second place, Brooks and Dunn

Third place, McCain and Palin.

No duo in the history of music may have done anything as smart as Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn did this year, in uncomplainingly allowing their riveting song “Only in America” to be used as a rallying cry by both the Obama campaign and the McCain campaign. The song became inescapable– an anthem. And Brooks and Dunn made it so by being wisely diplomatic when it came to their feelings about opposing political camps leaning on their words and music.

9. Chicagoans were understanding and courteous this week when major streets were shut down before and after Obama’s trip to Grant Park to acknowledge his victory.

There was a novelty to it. We don’t get many presidents around here.

But if this should become routine– if Obama makes Chicago his (Mid)western White House– don’t expect (Chicagoans being Chicagoans) the friendly feelings about road closings to endure.

Should this develop into a habit– should inconveniencing Chicago drivers for Obama motorcades become a regular thing– look for a shocking headline when he runs for reelection in 2012: OBAMA LOSES ILLINOIS

10. It has been less than a week since we on the bus were with Obama in Des Moines as, in the last dash of his campaign, he asked Iowans for their votes.

That was last Friday.

In the time since then, both he, and our bus, have made the trip from Des Moines back to Chicago.

It is the same number of miles. But it’s safe to say, in this indelible American week, that President-elect Obama has come infinitely farther.

ABOARD THE CNN EXPRESS

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– There was a moment last night– this was just before Barack Obama and his family walked onto the stage in Grant Park for his first public appearance as president-elect– when the throngs of people in the park fell almost completely silent.

In one respect this was a product of an explicable glitch in the proceedings. During the long campaign, the timing of Obama’s entrances at rallies was meticulously coordinated– the preliminary orators (usually local government officials and candidates) spoke, the music and its pacing built up with the intention of quickening the pulses of the crowds, and then, at exactly the right moment, Obama, the candidate, would make his entrance.

But by late last night Obama was no longer a candidate, and there was no need to pump up the sense of anticipation, and the evening’s events– the concession call from John McCain, the congratulatory call from President Bush– were being dealt with as they rapidly occurred on a timetable Obama’s staff could not control. So there was some dead time in the park before Obama appeared on the stage.

And the crowd, for just those brief few moments, became all but mute. They weren’t certain what was going to happen next.

What happened next, in the crisp and clear night, was the Obama family suddenly coming into sight. Then, the cheers reached the sky. But in the quiet that preceded...

In that quiet there was the recognition:

Here comes the part of this drama that is unknown and unknowable.

Here– in the days and weeks and years ahead– comes life; here comes events that know no schedule, that can’t be planned, that will appear on no carefully constructed itinerary.

The silence from the crowd was like an intake of breath.

The silence said:

Here we are– we, the people in Grant Park; we, the people of the United States; we, the people of the world. Here we are, and none of us– not even and especially the man on the stage, the man just elected to be the 44th president– can be sure of what lies ahead.

If some in the audience– those of us in the park, and those watching around the world– sensed perhaps the slightest sliver of a subdued tone in Obama’s voice, a perceptible difference in his timbre, if not his words, from how he had sounded on the campaign trail, the shift was understandable.

It may have been his own version– intentional or involuntary– of that sudden silence that fell over the crowd. He can’t be silent, in any sense of that word– he is going to be the president. But during that same span late last night when the audience, in its brief hush, seemed to be acknowledging that everything– everything– had just changed, so, too, Obama appeared to be sending the signal, to the rest of us and maybe to himself, that he was well aware of the change, and was already beginning to deal with it.

He is no longer a candidate seeking something. Last night’s Chicago weather– so warm and inviting for November– was deceptive; it will not be warm here very much longer. Obama, of all people, knows that; he has lived in Chicago long enough to realize that balmy days with winter coming are the most predictable of teases.

The silence of the crowd ended and the roar greeted him, and as he, a man just hired for a new job, looked out at the people and at his city’s glorious skyline, you asked yourself if the thought may have been crossing his mind:

There will, in my life, be other good nights. But none of them will ever be as good as this one.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

Photo by Michal Czerwonka/Getty Images

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– City of the big shoulders, Carl Sandburg called it, and the phrase has become part of the national lexicon.

But the strangest thing is going on in Chicago tonight:

In Grant Park, uncounted thousands of people, with more pouring in by the minute, are staring at a giant television screen above the stage where, at some point tonight, Barack Obama will stand.

And behind the people– behind their backs, wrapping around the park– the high-rise buildings appear to be looking over their shoulders, gazing at the huge screen. It’s an illusion, but that’s the appearance of it– that kind neck-craning civic anticipation.

Political preferences aside, something is going on here tonight. Everyone– and seemingly everything– is stretching to get a good view.

There are beams from Hollywood-style Klieg lights shooting toward the blackness of the sky– a little out of place in the capital of the Midwest, but this is no ordinary night– and a crescent moon peers down upon security helicopters buzzing the field.

It’s hard to guess what passengers in jets heading right now for O’Hare or Midway airports must make of this– unless they realize that what they’re seeing is a gathering for Obama, they might wonder why such a churning crowd has gathered for a concert at which there is no performer up on the stage.

They’ll undoubtedly look down from those airliners in the November sky: just more people peering over the shoulders of a city on a night like none seen here before.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

Josh Rubin (CNN)

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– Because there have been so many unpredictable things during this presidential election year, the feeling in the Chicago air tonight is just one more surprise.

Not the feeling of anticipation among the Barack Obama supporters who have gathered in Grant Park– they are excited and encouraged, but the official declaration of a winning candidate is still some time away.

The air itself, though– the November 4 nighttime air in the city– is unlike most November nights that Chicagoans, over the generations, have come to expect.

It feels like a September football Friday night in small-town America– a little cool, but far from cold; crisp; overcoats optional. It was shirtsleeve weather here during the day, but right now, in Grant Park, you half-expect to see the parents of members of the school marching band carrying cardboard containers bearing hot chocolate and caramel apples up into the stands.

But then you look over the heads of the people gathered on the grass, and you see the Sears Tower in one direction, the Prudential Building, the brawny towers that provide a steel-and-glass barrier wall to the west of Lake Michigan.

The lawn of Grant Park is illuminated by highest-intensity-white portable lights, making it considerably brighter than the sidewalks of most Chicago neighborhoods; the night air is pitch-black but crystal-clear, giving the illusion that you can see to infinity. There is no candidate here yet– just television screens informing the people in the park of the projected results state-by-state.

The cheers begin on the floor of the park and the echoes roll toward the streets of the city, as if signifying yearned-for touchdowns.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

Yiqi Wang and Liuliu Pan

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– They could not vote in today’s election.

But in their country, they said, there are no nights like tonight– nights when supporters of opposing presidential candidates gather publicly in huge numbers in the hopes that the person they support will soon lead the nation.

“We came here tonight for pleasure,” said Liuliu Pan, 23, of Chengdu, China. She is in the United States to study neuroscience at Northwestern University’s downtown campus in Chicago.

“We didn’t know how safe it would be to come down here tonight," said her friend, Yiqi Wang, also 23, also of Chengdu. He is in the United States to study finance at the Illinois Institute of Technology, not far south of here in Chicago.

They said they did not know what to expect in Grant Park tonight– this year’s long presidential campaign itself has been quite different from what they are accustomed to at home, and what they had heard, in advance, about the potentially massive gathering in the park made them uncertain about whether to try to attend. Like so many of the people in the park with whom we have been speaking, they have no tickets to the event.

But. . . .

"It just seemed that, because we are in the United States, and because we are in Chicago, we had to come look at this,” Yiqi Wang said.

Both of them said that what they heard about Chicago before they arrived here to study had not prepared them for what they would find.

“I had a very old impression of Chicago,” Liuliu Pan said. “An industrial, old-city feeling." The overall sense of what she was expecting to find, she said, was dark, almost grim.

And now?

“I did not expect such a. . .decent. . .city,” she said, choosing her words. “I find it to be more graceful than I would have thought."

Future impressions of Chicago– impressions held by strangers far away– may be formed in part by the shape of the events that are unfolding tonight in the park.

“I heard that in 1968 there was an accident right here," Yiqi Wang said. “An issue."

The Democratic National Convention of 1968, and the violence in Grant Park, did, indeed, feel like an accident to many of those in the middle of it.

“I don’t think I will feel unsafe here at all,” he said, now that he had arrived at the event, and together the two of them walked toward a night that, however it turns out, will become a part of the history of the country, and– perhaps just as important– the city.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

James Lewis and Pamela Conley

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– “I talked to my grandmother as I was on my way here," said Pamela Conley, 27.

There was something in her voice as she said this– something that sounded like pride.

“My grandmother is 81 years old," she said. “She lives in St. Louis. She told me she stood in line for almost three hours today so that she could vote.

“She told me that she thought she would never live to see this day. She remembers when everywhere she went, there were public restrooms that were labeled ‘White' and ‘Colored.’ ”

Pamela Conley said she has come to Grant Park tonight not just for herself, but for her grandmother, whose name is May Conley.

“I’m scared about what may happen tonight," she said. “I have trouble believing that Barack Obama will really win. It doesn’t seem real.”

But there was no way she was going to be anywhere this evening other than this park. She has no tickets; neither does her friend, James Lewis, 28, who was waiting with her to enter the portion of the park where people without tickets will be permitted to gather.

They won’t see Obama; they know that.

It doesn’t matter to them.

“This is history on so many levels,” Lewis said. “I’m not talking about just if he wins. But for a person like me to say that I have just voted for an African-American to be president of the United States. . . .”

His voice trailed off.

Does he believe that, by the end of tonight, Obama will be the next president?

“I won’t believe it even if he does win,” Lewis said. “I won’t believe he’s president until he is actually inaugurated.”

What does he mean by that?

“Just what it sounds like,” he said. “I worry. I hope he is elected tonight, but I won’t believe he is president until the moment I see him sworn in.”

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

Dale and Catherine Dunn

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– “Welcome to Election Night at Grant Park,” the recorded voice intoned from a loudspeaker system, again and again and again.

“We talked to the boys about safety,” said Catherine Dunn, 36.

“They know not to walk away from us, and to look for a policeman if there’s any trouble," said her husband, Dale Dunn, 38.

They had come downtown to Chicago from suburban Schaumburg tonight, bringing with them their sons: Liam, 5, and Elliot, 4. They had heard all the stories about the huge crowds that are expected– people with tickets, people without tickets– and they are among the latter. But they felt they had to be here tonight.

“We want the boys, some day, to be able to say that they were here," Catherine Dunn said.

She said she will feel that way even if Barack Obama does not win the presidency: “There’s never been a night like this in Chicago,” she said. “It’s going to be an unforgettable experience, no matter what."

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime,” Dale Dunn said. “I want us to be able to talk about this night with our sons when they get older.”

The history of the piece of land to where they were heading is not pristine: this is where the riots at the Democratic National Convention of 1968 unfolded and ended up defining another presidential election season, and where street crime marred the area surrounding the Taste of Chicago festival during the summer just past. Grant Park, historically, has not been a place where one has automatically been able to count on placid and unsullied times.

But the Dunn family believes that nothing that has gone on here before will equal, in the city’s collective memory, what will happen tonight should Obama become president-elect.

“We won’t stay here all night, because the boys have their bedtime," Catherine Dunn said. “But we have to be in the middle of this, if just for a little while." They moved toward the lawn, hoping to be allowed to find a place.

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KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images.)

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– Here’s an Election Day prediction:

Some year not far in the future– maybe not four years from now, or eight years from now, or twelve years from now, but soon enough– don’t be startled if the current political trend toward early voting is reversed, and states decide to make it more difficult, once again, to vote on any day other than Election Tuesday.

At least that is the clear signal we are getting from the people we have talked with as we have driven through the United States on our journey leading up to today– and the clear signal we are getting from people at Grant Park, where tonight’s rally for Barack Obama will be held.

Alice Richards

“I voted early just because I could, but I think it’s ridiculous," said Alice Richards, 65, of Wheaton, Illinois. “I was at a mall– the Stratford Square Mall– and there was a place where people could vote early while they were shopping, so I did.”

In retrospect, she’s not happy about it, because she didn’t think that she was required to show enough documentation– and, although she still is solidly behind the candidate for whom she voted for president, she has since changed her mind on one of the local issues for which she cast a ballot. On that issue, even though today is Election Day, it's not Election Day for her– her vote is gone, and she can’t get it back.

“Absentee voting if you‘re going to be out of town, yes,” she said. “Early voting, no. You shouldn’t be able to vote early just because you want to– it changes the campaign. It changes the meaning of Election Day.”

Many of the people with whom we have been speaking– even those who have exercised their opportunity to vote early– seem to be harboring the slightest suspicion that anything that seems too good to be true most likely is. With political leaders making it so easy to cast a ballot well before Election Day, the hunch is that the impetus is not necessarily altruistic.

Bill Zielinski

“Early voting is just too ripe for fraud,” said Bill Zielinski, 53, of Chicago. “If you make it too easy for people to cast their ballots, the chances are that those votes can be manipulated."

He believes that the political leaders who are aggressively promoting the expansion of early voting– and who say they are doing it to help their constituents– may really have a separate agenda. “Some states let a person register and then vote instantly," he said. “When you have that. . .I mean, you think about political groups rounding up busloads of people, and then taking them to register and then vote right away– you don’t have to think too hard to worry about the possible abuses.”

There’s also the opening-the-Christmas-presents-early theory of voting before Election Day: you can do it, but when the holiday arrives, it doesn’t feel like the holiday because most of the gifts have been unwrapped weeks before. More than a few people with whom we’ve spoken feel that the significance of Election Day is diluted when it becomes one of many days when a person can cast a ballot.

And others speculate about what will happen in the first future presidential year when tens of millions of votes are recorded well in advance of Election Day, and then there is a major news development that has the potential to change voters’ minds, but it’s too late. That, some people tell us, is what will be the turning point: the first presidential election in which the outcome will be altered because too many citizens voted too soon to allow the campaign to fully play out.

Nicole Woods

“It’s a little like gambling,” said Nicole Woods, 33, of Chicago. “You put your money on the table, and you may win, or you may end up losing it.” She said that she is a proponent of early voting, and is willing to accept the gamble that nothing major will happen between the time a person casts his or her vote, and Election Day. The convenience of early voting is worth it, she said.

And if a vote turns out to be cast for the wrong person? “That’s the chance you take,” she said. “It happens in life all the time, so it’s going to happen in voting."

As more and more people vote early, frustrations may grow inside presidential campaigns: yes, the early balloting provides an opportunity to lock in votes before minds can be changed, but in that case, what are the long and expensive campaigns really for? How will future candidates feel, campaigning down the stretch in November, if the majority of votes have already been cast in October?

Some voters predict that the political parties may eventually decide it’s in their best interest to limit the number of votes that are permitted to be cast before the campaigns are finished. Back in the days when afternoon newspapers were still a potent force in American life, presidential candidates made certain that they cast their ballots first thing Election Day morning, so they could be photographed, smiling and purportedly optimistic, as they emerged from the curtains. The reason was that the wire-service photos in all those afternoon papers were the last burst of electioneering available to the candidates– a reminder to citizens across the land to go out and cast a vote for the right person before the polls closed in the evening.

Afternoon papers may be a dwindling part of the American scene, but the candidates still vote in the morning and smile at the cameras, to take advantage of the many new ways of dispersing effective images. The images by definition become less effective when there are fewer voters on Election Day– when Election Day is merely one of multiple election days.

For now, though, the early-voting bandwagon is still filling up. Tens of millions of ballots had already been cast by yesterday. In this election year, with polling places expected to be jammed, and long lines predicted to be the rule, many people are grateful that the early votes are an option.

Cynthia Weiss

“I voted almost two weeks ago at the Edgewater library,” said Cynthia Weiss, 55, of Chicago. “To me, anything that can be done to make it very easy for people to vote is a good thing. That’s the heart of what democracy is. There’s no such thing as too many people voting– that can never be a bad thing."

But of course, one should probably never say never. “Yes, people welcome the convenience of not having to stand in line for three hours on Election Day," Bill Zielinski said. “And whenever people welcome the convenience of something, there are other people thinking up ways to take advantage of it. This is politics, don’t forget."

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CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN)– When you spend an entire autumn aboard a bus with three other guys– days, nights, meals, missed meals– you tend to get to know each other pretty well, and to have too many conversations to count them all up.

So– this was at some point during the last week of the campaign, when all four of us who were sitting around the bus: Dale Fountain, who drives the Election Express; Josh Rubin, who produces the stories for CNN that come out of the bus; Jordan Placie, who makes certain the electronic signals hit the right spot on the right satellite and find their way into your home; your devoted typist– arrived, at about the same moment, at a mutual realization concerning this election year:

The finish line isn't.

Meaning: tomorrow night, when the story is supposed to end, it really is just beginning.

If Barack Obama wins the presidency, the historic aspects of that victory, and of what will follow, are self-evident. If John McCain proves the pollsters wrong, and walks away with the presidency, there will be a different kind of history in the making, one that will be analyzed for generations to come.

Either way, regardless of your political leanings, you almost certainly have to concede:

When the ballots are finished being counted late tomorrow night (or early the next morning), the country in which we live, and its long-running story, will only become more interesting, not less.

The finish line, we are about to find, is really the starting line.

In the nation's fascination with the race for president of the United States, most of the focus has been on the president part. Very soon it will be time to shift the focus to the United States part. This country is about to write its own series of mesmerizing new chapters, as it reacts in the weeks and months to come to whatever the banner headlines will say Wednesday morning.

(And, should Obama win and become the nation's first African-American president, there will be a secondary story that will not receive anywhere near as much attention, but will be compelling in its own right: Obama, if victorious, will also be the first president in the history of the republic who is a resident of Chicago, and– please trust me on this– the social/political/psychological/emotional ramifications of that are vast and complicated. This isn't the time to go into it, but should Obama become president-elect, we will delve as best we can.)

Some of the reasons this story is just beginning are reasons that people across the country have pointed out to us as we roll through. On this most recent leg of the trip, which took us across Iowa on our way into Chicago (the bus, with Mr. Placie at his engineering console, will be transmitting live pictures from Grant Park of whatever may transpire tomorrow night), several people mentioned to us the qualities of this year's campaign that have set it apart.

Matt Harris

“How long has it been since no one on either ticket is either the incumbent president, or the incumbent vice president, or has never served in either position?” asked Matt Harris, 27.

It has been 56 years, before most Americans now alive were born– it has not happened since 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon defeated Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman.

“That's part of what makes this a turning point in history,” Harris said. “This year would feel much different if everyone running wasn't going to be brand-new to the White House. It would feel like an interim election. But this election has never felt that way.”

Krissi Diers

Krissi Diers, 31, a friend and colleague of Harris's at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines, said the excitement of this election year “has not been confined to young people. You are seeing 80-year-olds getting just as excited about the election as people who are voting for the first time. Something special is going on.”

All across America, she said, “people have been talking about this for a year and a half, or for two years. Whatever happens, I think people are ready to see it happen. It's time to find out.”

That it is. But all we're going to find out tomorrow night is the name of the winner of the contest.

Starting the next morning, the greater story commences: the story of the United States as it awakens to realize that the predictable part of this– the part in which, on a Tuesday in November, a president, regardless of that president's name or party, is elected– has concluded.

And that the enthralling and unpredictable part– who we will become, as we all head together up the road– will just be entering its first uncertain hours.

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Eric Olmscheid

“It feels like people have put away their cynicism during this election year," said Eric Olmscheid, 27. “But if I had to bet, I’d say that the cynicism will come back once we have a new president.”

An arts education manager, he is another of the people with whom we’ve been speaking as we have moved through Iowa toward Election Day. As with the others, we spoke with him not so much about his preference in candidates, but his sense of what this election year has been like.

“People haven’t been as cynical as usual because, no matter who wins, there’s going to be a change in Washington for the first time in eight years,” he said. “The voters know that the president and vice president will not be people who have been working in the White House.

“But when I say that the cynicism will probably come back, that’s just because the first time the new president, whoever he is, makes an important decision, some people are going to be happy about it and some aren’t. It’s not going to feel like a campaign– in a campaign, the candidates don’t have to make real decisions for the country. And the people who don’t like that first decision the new president makes are going to go back to their old way of thinking about politics."

Still, he said, he believes most Americans understand that “things don’t happen in this country based just on what the president of the United States wants to happen." And he hopes the energy that has been shown by the electorate all during the campaign doesn’t disappear the first time what happens in the new administration feels like business as usual.

“There won’t be the flashiness of the campaign,” he said. That’s just the reality of governing, he said– the everyday business of running the country is not as compelling and exciting as what our presidential campaign seasons have turned into.

“But so many people have become involved with the campaign, thinking about it and talking about it and really caring about it,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t go away. Because I think the enthusiasm and engagement, no matter who you want to win, has been good for everyone, and I wouldn’t want to lose that."

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Ben Bueford

“Hectic,” said Ben Bueford, 65.

That’s the word he thinks best sums up what this election year has been like: “It’s been a very hectic year, which I think is wonderful." He’s retired, and works part-time at a YMCA; he is one of the people with whom we spoke about the tone of the long campaign, on our way through Iowa as we move toward Election Day.

“You can tell that there has been a level of interest in this campaign that is different than in years before, and I think it’s that way all over the country, not just here in Iowa," he said. Because Iowa and its caucuses play such an important role in the early stages of the process of electing a new president, he said, it is tempting for Iowans to believe that the interest there is more intense than in other places.

“But I don’t think that's really so," he said. “It may have started here, but the way the country has become involved in this election year, especially so many young people– I’ve seen a lot of presidential elections, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this."

Because he is a supporter of Barack Obama, he knews he may be accused of not being objective about something he has noticed, but he wanted to offer his feelings about it anyway:

“I don’t like the tone of what John McCain’s campaign has been saying about Sen. Obama,” he said. “In my opinion, it’s starting to sound more like slander than a list of the facts. It seems to me that the McCain campaign is trying to make Obama seem to be not quite American. You can disagree with your opponent, but when you try to portray him as not being a good person, you put fear into people.”

He knows that McCain supporters probably feel strongly the other way, and the visceral strength of the feelings on both sides, he said, is what has separated this year’s campaign from some others he has watched in the past. “Whatever you may like or dislike about the campaign," he said, “you can’t criticize the level of energy. I don’t think it could possibly get any more energetic.”

Kari Tindall

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“I don’t think we’re ever, as a nation, going to completely come together," said Kari Tindall, 25. “And I don’t think we really need to.”

She’s a fundraiser for a theater and arts complex in Iowa; as we moved through Iowa on our way to where we’ll be spending Election Day, we talked with people not about their predictions for who will win and who will lose on Tuesday, but about their thoughts concerning this long campaign itself– and what will come after.

“It’s our nature in this country to have two sides to everything,” Tindall said. “That‘s just what we do. So to expect, after the election, for people who supported Obama and people who supported McCain to completely agree on everything, just because one candidate has won. . .you know that’s not going to happen.

“What would be good, though, is if we’re able to use the experience of the campaign we've just been through to try to find some common ground when it's over. That in itself would be better than the way things have been.”

She said she worries that the campaign, in its final weeks, “has turned a little bit ugly." The way she perceives it, Barack Obama has managed to give the impression that he “always keeps his cool,” while John McCain at certain times “seems overwhelmed.”

But she recognizes that those perceptions will not be helpful once there is one winner and one loser. And she thinks the reason there has been so much interest– and so much acrimony– during the presidential campaign of 2008 is that “there’s a lot more news coverage than ever before."

It’s not that citizens make the conscious choice to be so consumed, even obsessed, with news, she said.

“It’s that you can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere. You couldn’t avoid the news this year even if you tried.”

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Joe Raedle (Getty Images.)

MITCHELLVILLE, Iowa (CNN)– The echoes are still sounding, even though we’re on our way to the next city, and toward Election Day.

“Next Tuesday, voters will say no to the McCain-Palin campaign of fear and smear,” Tom Harkin, Democratic senator from Iowa, was saying to a cheering crowd in downtown Des Moines.

It wasn’t the fear-and-smear insult to John McCain and Sarah Palin that stood out; McCain and Palin were, somewhere in America, being just as insulting to Barack Obama and Joe Biden on this day.

No, what stood out was the “next Tuesday.” Suddenly, the candidates and those who speak on their behalf no longer have to say “in November” when referring to the election. Now it’s down to a single day of the week: Tuesday.

There were, in the Des Moines public park, those twin contemporary hallmarks of presidential campaign rallies: enormous American flags held temporarily aloft by the gigantic orange steel arms of SkyTrak forklifts, and armed men wearing black on surrounding rooftops. Patriotism and firepower, as omnipresent as confetti and brass bands once were.

And the helicopters. Always the security helicopters, buzzing over the crowd.

The word I O W A, just like that, in big, white, blocky welcome-to-the-state-fair style letters with spaces in between each one, greeted the arriving members of the audience, many of whom were walking up Locust Street on a warm and gorgeous autumn day. I had walked with some of them, crossing a bridge that spanned the Des Moines River, and that Bruce Springsteen song that has become as identified with Obama rallies as his campaign button or his photo on posters sounded over the loudspeaker system, indicating that he would soon be present.

All of this will be gone by this time next week; the cheering that has greeted the candidates for months will go silent, the yard signs will come down, one man will be triumphant and the other will be wounded in places no one can see. On this day in Des Moines, workers down at the Civic Center were putting into place the instruments and stage props for a touring Beatles tribute production that had come to town, but in the final week of the presidential campaign no one, not even second-carbon Beatles, can draw focus away from the two remaining men.

“It’s good to be back in Iowa,” Obama’s voice, as familiar now as any of those Beatle songs, boomed out from the same loudspeakers that had carried Tom Harkin’s voice. Even those in the crowd, estimated at 25,000, who could not see Obama felt that they were with him– the voice, in these months of campaigning, has become part of the air around us, as has the voice of John McCain.

McCain, somewhere right now, give or take a few minutes, was saying that it was good to be back in that somewhere, even as Obama, here, was saying:

“I don’t know if you saw me standing in the rain in 30-degree weather earlier this week. . . .”

What went without elaborating– what he, and his audience, accepted without really thinking about it– was that of course many of them had seen him at a rally in the rain. The television pictures of it had come into their homes, just as the television pictures from here, right this second, were coming into homes around the world. The satellite dish on top of this bus in which we are riding was delivering the pictures today; like an NFL or NBA team, presidential candidates, at least for a swiftly passing and inevitably finite interlude in their lives, know, every day when they go to work, that the work they do will be observed in real time by people they will never meet in cities they will never visit.

“. . . I’m still thawing out,” Obama said, to laughter.

If he was nervous in these final days, you couldn’t sense a sliver of it; he had not only been on time to his rally, but two minutes early– 11:28 arrival for an announced 11:30 event– and it was as if he was saying: I don’t need to let the anticipation build; I don’t need to wait for the crowd to grow. The tone of his voice, at the microphone, was like a man at a diner talking to someone on the next stool.

What none of us knows– none of us who have never been one of the two remaining candidates for president in the last week of a campaign– is what those two remaining men see and hear from the stages.

What those of us in the audience hear are echoes– two or three separate echoes of the candidate’s voice, bouncing off nearby buildings. Today Obama’s voice was bouncing off brick, and glass, and steel; it was bouncing off the exterior walls of the Des Moines Public Library, that voice telling the crowd, once, twice, three times, all of the voices overlapping:

“I am going to stop. . .insurance companies. . .from discriminating. . .against those who are sick. . . .”

Was he, on the stage, hearing his voice bounce back three times? Was John McCain, somewhere on the continent, hearing the echoes of his own voice? And when, next week, the echoes stop for one of them, will he– the one who no longer hears the cheers– feel the void?

“. . .to win on November 4,” Obama’s voice said, once, twice, three times, and he had momentarily forgotten:

He no longer has to say November 4. All he, and his opponent, have to say now is:

Tuesday.

He finished, and “Signed, Sealed, and Delivered” came onto the loudspeakers, and then, as always, the song that he, and McCain, and George W. Bush before them, have long featured at their rallies, Brooks & Dunn singing “Only in America”:

“. . .we all get a chance,

everybody gets to dance. . . .”

Only in America, indeed. Later in the day, as the sun was getting ready to set, I walked back to the park.

The candidate was gone. The music was missing. The men on the rooftops, the orange forklifts that had flown the flags, the helicopters above, had all disappeared. Somewhere in America, undoubtedly, they were about to materialize again, for Obama, for McCain.

As they will until Tuesday, when the cheering, for one of the men, dies. We, too, are on our way to the next city now; Des Moines was yesterday. Tuesday is up ahead, growing bigger in the windshield.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN)– On this journey we stay in a lot of hotels near interstate highways, the kind that serve free breakfasts in the lobby. And at adjacent tables at breakfast one day during the past week, there was a person crying at one table, and people laughing at the next.

We have been in West Virginia and Indiana and Kentucky and Ohio and Missouri and now here in Iowa in recent days, and the stops tend to blur into each other, but this stood out. The woman crying at the one breakfast table was in the town for a funeral; I could overhear the conversation as family members tried to comfort her. She was weeping softly; if the people raucously laughing at the next table over had been aware of her grief, I like to think that they would have toned it down. But they were facing away from her, they didn’t hear or see her, so their laughter continued, as did her quiet tears.

Many times, it’s like that in daily life– the worst day you’ve ever had is, somewhere in the world, if not at the next table, the best day someone you’ve never met has ever had. And on Tuesday night, as happens on a Tuesday night in November every four years, at least 40 percent of the country, probably considerably more than that, is going to have an evening of sadness, while more than 50 percent of the country is going to be elated. Then, on Wednesday morning, we’re all going to be expected to wake up and live together as a nation in harmony.

It’s not so much the four people at the center of this who will be the test cases of how genuine that harmony is; John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden are professional politicians, and they know, at any rate, how to lose and then carry on.

But this has been an especially lengthy presidential campaign, nowhere more so than here in Iowa, the site of an Obama rally today. The campaign has been with all of us for such a long time that, when it’s suddenly over and there is one winning ticket and one losing ticket, the American atmosphere itself, the air around us, will abruptly feel very different and more than a little strange.

I think of those two breakfast tables.

Monica Stutzman supports John McCain

“If John McCain loses, I will feel very bad," said Monica Stutzman, of Granger, Iowa. “On a personal level."

Her concern, she said, is visceral: “I don’t think he can keep our country safe. Obama is too easily persuaded, too easily swayed. I won’t rest as easily at night.”

Regardless of who wins next week, that’s the kind of quandary the United States may be facing; it was probably inevitable, after a campaign as protracted and angry as this one, that the two sides are not necessarily ready to shake hands and walk off the field with their arms over each others’ shoulders. The candidates may or may not say all the proper things about each other at the end of next Tuesday night, but it appears far less than certain that their supporters will be as quick to say: a fair fight has been won.

Paul Hannan supports Barack Obama

The distrust runs both ways: “If McCain wins a close race, I’m going to be more than a little suspicious,” said Paul Hannan, 56, of Des Moines, who is a supporter of Obama. “I’m going to want to know the exact story of how the electoral votes, from what states, put him over. If McCain were to somehow win in a landslide, that would be one thing. But if it’s close, all I’m going to be able to think about is what happened in Florida in 2000. I’d be a little bit frightened."

Duane Miller says he could live with either presidential candidate winning.

There will, of course, be people who will readily, if not happily, accept the outcome of the election, even if their preferred candidate loses. “I’m for Obama, but anybody’s better than what we’ve got now," said Duane Miller, 60, of Urbandale, Iowa. “I want Obama to win, but I can live with either one of them– McCain couldn’t possibly be any worse than George W.”

Kari Traver supports Barack Obama

And Kari Traver, 26, of West Des Moines, who will vote for Obama, said: “If he doesn’t win, and McCain does win, I can’t say that I will feel that bad. Tomorrow’s another day. If McCain is president, I’ll still fall asleep at night with peace of mind. We’re in Des Moines, Iowa. We’re going to be all right."

But then, in almost the next breath, she said there was something that did worry her:

“I’m very nervous for Obama. Not if he loses. But if he wins. If he becomes president."

Because?

“His safety,” she said.

In that place by the highway where we stayed on our way here, there was laughter at the one table and tears at the next, because someone’s joyful morning is always someone else’s terrible dawn. Not that you can do anything about it– it’s just the way the world has always been.

And as riveting as the outcome on Tuesday night is going to be, Wednesday’s sunrise will bring its own kind of fascination.

CHARLES DHARAPAK/AFP/Getty Images

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KANSAS CITY, Missouri (CNN)– At first, many people thought it was a trick question.

“You want me to say something good about who?” said Christine Graham, 43, of Arapahoe County, Colorado.

But it wasn't a trick. It was just a small attempt, in the final days of a presidential campaign that has at times been vicious and brutal-spirited, to, as they say, bring the country together.

“But I’m for John McCain," Christine Graham said.

That’s fine. McCain has your vote.

But, knowing that you’re not going to change your mind, Mrs. Graham, say something good about Barack Obama– something that you truly believe.

She hesitated.

“Well. . . .” she said.

She paused for a few more seconds, and then said:

“He’s a dreamer. I think he probably wants to make life easier for people.”

There. Easy as that.

Joel Michel is an Obama supporter.

And you, Joel Michel, 53, of Kansas City.

You say you’re going to vote for Obama?

“Yes.”

Good enough.

Now say something good about John McCain.

“Seriously?”

Yes– something genuine that you like about him.

“He seems like a nice guy,” Michel said. “And his war record, of course. The heroic aspect of him.”

Anything else?

“He seems like his own man, not so much a part of the Beltway,” Michel said. “And I think he really wants to get rid of those nefarious lobbyists.”

We were noticing something as we did this: The people, whether they supported McCain or Obama, seemed to be in a little better mood– in an observably more pleasant frame of mind– after they were urged to say something nice about the other guy. During a campaign year that has consisted of so many raised voices and ugly charges, they seemed to like this.

Jim Keeney is a McCain supporter.

Jim Keeney, 57, of Chillicothe, Missouri, strong supporter of John McCain: Say something good about Barack Obama.

“He‘s one of the best speakers I‘ve ever heard,” Keeney said. “He’s got youth going for him. And I think Joe Biden is a good man– I kind of wish Biden was running with McCain. So I can say something good about his vice presidential pick.”

How’d that feel, saying that?

“Good– but you know I’m still voting for McCain, right?”

Of course.

Now, Dave Fiala, 47, of Howells, Nebraska– you say that you’re an Obama voter?

“I am.”

Tell us something you really like about John McCain.

“What that man has been through– his war record in the military– how could anyone not respect that?” Fiala said. “And I think he’s genuine about his feelings. He genuinely believes that what he wants to do for the country is the right thing. But mostly I come back to how he handled terrible adversity– what he has been through, and where he has gotten to. I certainly have never been through anything like that. I’m not going to vote for him, but he’s a man I would enjoy meeting and talking to."

Mikki Huxtable, 46, McCain voter from Liberty, Missouri– say something good about Obama.

“He‘s a really good family man,” she said. “He’s a momma’s boy, and I say that in a good way– he cares about the moms in this country, because he was raised by his mother and his grandmother. He stopped his campaign to go visit his grandmother because she’s sick. I have a son who I wish was as much as a momma’s boy as Obama is. I wish he would depend on me more."

Trisha Brewer is a Canadian citizen...but still has something nice to say.

And you, Trisha Brewer, 33– you say you like Obama.

“Yes, but I’m not from the United States– I live in Victoria, British Columbia."

That’s all right. Since you like Obama, and would vote for him if you could, try to think of something nice to say about McCain.

“He’s very American," she said. “It's very obvious to me that McCain really does have America’s best interests at heart."

Mike Cohany, 45, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, John McCain voter– sorry to interrupt your evening, but can you say anything good about Barack Obama?

“He's energetic, he's charismatic, he‘s fresh, and it's clear that he believes things can improve,” Cohany said. “He's very poised in how he carries himself, and there’s no question he’s very intelligent. I’m into sports, and I read about how he likes to hang out with the guys to play basketball. He’s not going to get my vote, but, now that you ask, I think he’s a guy I would enjoy having a conversation with."

Junior Word, 33, of Knoxville, Tennessee– you say that Obama definitely has your vote?

“Yes. No question about it.”

Please say something good about John McCain.

Pause.

“He’s a believer. When he sets out to do something, he does it because he really is convinced it’s the right thing. I don’t agree with his policies, but I know that he is a true American.”

This just might catch on. In these last days of the campaign, this might start something– in city after city, in state after state, people might make themselves feel better by looking for the better side of the man they oppose.

Right.

But admit it– it beats what we’ve been hearing all year, doesn’t it?

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Robert Redford in The Candidate (WB 1972)

LIBERTY, Missouri (CNN)– “In the end, the country runs itself,” said Mike Roush, 43, of Lewis Center, Ohio.

He’s a businessman on the road. We’ve been talking with people, as we cross the country, about “The Candidate.”

Not the candidate– not Barack Obama or John McCain.

But “The Candidate”– the riveting 1972 political movie starring Robert Redford as a handsome and telegenic novice who runs for the United States Senate and wins. The cynicism of the movie, bordering on bitterness, is what makes its message lasting.

Some of the people with whom we’ve spoken remember “The Candidate” well; some have never seen it. But everyone– including Mike Roush– understands the power of its much-discussed closing scene.

In that scene Redford, who has just been elected after using every trick at his disposal and at the disposal of his campaign adviser (played by the late Peter Boyle), pulls Boyle aside and, with the victory cheers still sounding, says:

“What do we do now?”

It’s the ultimate election-night quandary: with triumph fresh and the office finally won, what comes next?

And even though we’ve been talking with people about “The Candidate,” they are quick to see the connection with the candidates: Obama and McCain, one of whom, in less than a week, will realize that the contest is at last over and that he is victorious.

“No one can solve all the things that need solving,” says Mike Roush

“Regardless of who goes into office, there’s only so much than he can do," Mike Roush told us. That, he said, is why Americans should take comfort in the thought that, in the ways that really count, the country runs itself.

“It’s true everywhere," he said. “I’ve worked for several large business operations. I’ve worked for a gas company– it didn’t matter who the CEO was, the gas kept flowing through the pipes. I’ve worked for a hospital corporation– it didn’t matter who the president of the hospital was, the patients continued to be cared for."

That’s not exactly the kind of analysis designed to stroke the egos of Obama and McCain as their long campaign nears its end. For a citizen to say to them, and of them: We always get by no matter who’s in charge. . . .

That is a potentially deflating thought, for the two men who have invested everything they have and everything they are into the proposition that the specific identity of next Tuesday’s winner is absolutely vital to the nation.

But, according to Mike Roush, Obama and McCain should cherish the knowledge that we always seem to manage to find our way.

“No one can solve all the things that need solving,” he said. “We’re all responsible.”

So that startling climactic line from the winning candidate in “The Candidate” is not quite as bleak as it sounds?

John Meyers is hopeful that the nation will unite behind the new president.

“The country is polarized now," said John Meyers, 33, of Phoenix, Arizona. “But I’m absolutely certain that the nation will come together and bond after the election."

Really? Despite all the heat and anger of the presidential campaign?

“When it comes down to what’s important for America, we always do,” Meyers said. “Hard times always bring people together.”

He’s not a politician– just, like Mike Roush, a business traveler in the middle of a weary week– but he sounded as hopeful as any candidate on a campaign stage when he said:

“I have a lot of faith in the people of this country. No one man, even when he’s elected to the White House, can solve our problems on his own. It takes a lot of people. It takes the nation."

So that half-giddy, half-despairing movie line as it was delivered by Redford:

“What do we do now?”. . . .

It sounds somewhat different, and less troubling, when considered in the context to which Mike Roush and John Meyers alluded: when the “we” is made larger.

Jessica Brucker, 21, of Kansas City, Missouri, said: “It would take longer than a single term for whoever is elected next week to accomplish what he has promised during the campaign."

What do we do now?

“I would like it if the country could be nice and happy," she said. “I think that would be enough."

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TERRE HAUTE, Indiana (CNN)– Unfortunately for John McCain and Barack Obama, the Michael Phelps Syndrome does not apply to them.

Or at least it will soon not apply to one of them– the one who, a week from tonight, will be elected president.

The Michael Phelps Syndrome– relatively new in our attention-flitting society– dictates that, no matter how famous you are today, you’ll be much less famous a few months from now.

In August, the entire nation, and much of the world, was fixated on Phelps‘ quest for eight Olympic gold medals. You would overhear people talking about him on the street and in restaurants.

The new half-life of fame being what it is, though, today– and this is still only October– August seems years distant. Phelps is a well-known guy, with endorsement contracts in place, but he is not at the center of the universe. That was a summer thing.

Today. . . .

Craig and Michelle Myers are undecided voters

“If McCain and Obama are the two best candidates we can come up with in this great country of ours, then we’ve got really slim pickings," said Craig Myers, 45, of North Judson, Indiana.

He and his wife, Michelle, are not completely certain which presidential candidate will be the recipient of their votes– but they’re much less than thrilled with the choice being presented them.

And the winner, a week from today, will not be the beneficiary of the Michael Phelps Syndrome. The one high-profile occupation that does not allow an employee to fade from the public’s attention, regardless of what else is going on in the world, is president of the United States. People will be thinking about the winner constantly beginning next Tuesday night, and every day and night after that for the next four years.

“I don’t know any really hard evidence about what either of them will do if they get into office,” Michelle Myers said. “All those commercials they put out are so bad. . .it’s come to the point, and I’m sorry to have to say this, where I don’t care what they have to say, because I don’t know whether to believe it"

The names of celebrated athletes may be on the tips of people’s tongues for months at a time, but during their off seasons the athletes are allowed to disappear. The biggest movie stars are omnipresent during the time their newest releases are on multiplex screens, but between films they are permitted to become less incessantly visible.

Not the person who wins next Tuesday night.

“I’m 45 years old,” Craig Myers said. “And for my whole life, all I remember from politicians on the national level is one lie after another.”

Mr. and Mrs. Myers, by the way, had no anger or cynicism in their voices as we talked about these things. They sounded almost wistful, as if wishing that they had reason to believe their words were misguided.

“Months and months of Obama and McCain just jabbing at each other,” she said. “It never stops.”

Yet it will, in a week. Which is when the Michael Phelps Syndrome– or, more accurately, the absence of it– will make itself the most evident.

“I don’t think either of the candidates can fix the problems our country is having right away," Craig Myers said.

But he, and just about everyone else in the United States, will be watching, every day, to see if the winner somehow can.

Craig and Michelle Myers, despite their misgivings, will vote. They wouldn’t think not to.

“Both candidates keep talking about change, but they don’t tell us specifically what the change will be," Craig Myers said.

Mr. and Mrs. Myers are a tough audience, and they will be waiting to find out. And the person from whom they will want the answers will not have the Michael Phelps luxury of stepping from the glare of the camera lights once the race is over. Because for the winner, this seemingly endless campaign is just the brief warmup before the main event.

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VANDALIA, Ohio (CNN)– “You will know their names and I will make them famous!"

John McCain once again used that line on the campaign trail over the weekend, as he does in virtually every speech. It refers to pork barrel projects– “You will know their names and I will make them famous!” is his promise/threat to veto all such legislation, and to tell the world who the offending congressional sponsors were.

But the line, if you extrapolate from what people have been telling us on our journey, has perhaps taken on a double meaning– one that could lead to a lucrative, if unlikely, second career for McCain, should he lose the election next week.

“McCain really is the one person who has made these two people overnight stars," said Larry Ealy, 54, of South Bend, Indiana. “It’s pretty amazing, how fast he made it happen."

More from Mr. Ealy later in this dispatch. For now. . . .

If McCain wins, his plate will be rather full for the next four years: president of the United States, commander in chief of the armed forces, leader of the free world. . .all of that.

But should he lose, a strong argument can be made that, over the last several months, McCain has shown an uncanny knack for a line of work you wouldn’t automatically associate with him:

Talent agent.

Just look what he has done for two unknowns:

Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

McCain has made them among the most famous people in the United States. What he has accomplished on their behalf would be the envy of any Los Angeles or New York agent– he has taken them from utter anonymity (in Palin’s case, she was known in Alaska, and in political circles, but not to the vast American public), and he has turned them into stars with unlimited futures.

It’s not as easy as it sounds, even for a presidential candidate. Barack Obama hasn’t done it; people whose names have been connected to his have become famous, yes, but not necessarily because he wanted them to (think in terms of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of Bill Ayers, even of Joe the Plumber himself). Obama has made himself– Obama– exceptionally famous, which was probably a good move.

McCain?

He has all but assured that, regardless of what happens to him on Election Day, Palin and Joe the Plumber have stellar careers waiting for them on the other side– whether in politics, television, book-writing or top-dollar lecture tours.

Gloria Bragg had never heard of Sarah Palin before McCain introduced her to the world.

“I had never heard of Sarah Palin before the night she walked out to accept the nomination,” said Gloria Bragg, 44, of Fairfax Station, Virginia.

Like many people we have met as we cross the country, she said that were it not for John McCain, she probably would never in her life have given a moment’s thought to Palin or to Joe. “Someone at work told me about Joe the Plumber after McCain started talking about him,” she said. “Now you hear about him every day.”

McCain, if he should decide to pursue talent-agent work after his political career eventually comes to an end, would be going against type: agents, in stereotype, are smooth and silky talkers, are tethered to their BlackBerrys or computer screens, are slaves to styles and trends. In other words, everything that McCain is not.

But that would work for him, not against him. He would stand out– an agent unlike all the others. A maverick, you might say.

Already, he is getting raves for having promoted his first two discoveries.

Back to Larry Ealy, the fellow from South Bend:

“The name ‘Sarah Palin’ meant nothing to me until John McCain found her and told the world about her,” he said. “But what a future she has. She’s got it all– great personality, communication skills, feminine looks. She’s smart as a firecracker– just phenomenal. I have a sister who’s similar to her. It was great that McCain found her– finally, a regular person.

“Same with Joe the Plumber. Smart and articulate. He asked the question of Obama, but it was McCain who saw his potential. That’s the American way, isn’t it? New stars coming out of nowhere?”

It would be perfectly understandable if, at this point in the campaign, McCain does not want to spend a single moment thinking about what he might do if the voting goes the wrong way– and about the unexpected discovery, deep inside his personality, of the agent’s gift of putting aside one’s own ego to let one’s clients shine and bask in the applause.

Who would have thought it? He turns out to be a guy with the magic touch– a starmaker with a golden gut.

Up the road, Tina Fey might want to consider hiring him. She’s as hot right now as a show-business star can be, and she’s in a great position to demand to renegotiate all her contracts.

She already owes most of it to McCain. If he hadn’t found Palin, Fey would be having a very different autumn.

“You will know their names and I will make them famous!"

Take it to the bank.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

MOREHEAD, Kentucky (CNN)– A pretty good rule of thumb is:

If everyday shoppers coming out of Best Buy stores, out of Home Depots, out of Dick’s Sporting Goods, out of Payless Shoe Source, are talking about the Dow Jones industrial average, that’s probably not a good thing.

The Dow, for those who have made the choice not to be obsessed with the stock market– or at least who thought they had made that choice– is supposed to be sort of like the air pressure in the tires of someone else’s car: nothing you have to worry about, unless the tire blows and sends the car skidding in your direction.

The tire seems to have blown.

And Americans who otherwise would be talking about sports, or how much they dislike their bosses, or holiday plans, now are talking about the Dow, even though they‘d prefer not to. You overhear it all the time.

Because even for people who don’t have a lot of money in the stock market– or who don’t have any money at all in the stock market– the bizarre behavior of the Dow, they are finding out, is affecting their lives, and the lives of their loved ones.

On Friday we’ll have a report here about how the abject failures on the part of the executives who run Wall Street are disturbing family Christmas plans in the middle of the country. In small ways and large, men and women who would prefer not to worry about decisions made by faraway financial experts– experts they have never met– are beginning to understand that they have lost the game without ever having chosen to play.

Debbie Whitt has felt the impact of the credit crunch.

Debbie Whitt, 49, who sells jewelry in a retail store, said:

“I think people are afraid mostly because of the hype.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt put it somewhat differently, but the thought was the same. And fear itself is still real.

“We have all kinds of plans to make it easier for people to buy our jewelry,” she said. “Twelve months same as cash, 18 months same as cash, 24 months same as cash. . . ."

What that means, she said, is that the jewelry store has worked out a financing plan with banks that allows the customers to pay for a piece of jewelry over many months without having to pay interest above the price on the tag.

And customers aren’t going for it?

“They’re going for it," she said. “But the banks have become much tighter. Their credit checks are tougher. So we may sell a piece of jewelry, but then when we send the information to the bank, they say they won’t extend credit to the customer. I’ve had big sales turned down by the banks. Someone they would have extended credit to before, now they say, ‘Not at this time.’”

So the sale is canceled. The gift goes unpurchased. The store’s proceeds are lower.

Enough of this, in enough retail businesses, and jobs start to be lost.

At a hardware-and-garden-supply store in a shopping center where we stopped on our journey, there were Halloween pumpkins stacked outside the front door, with a displayed price of $4.50 apiece.

“Can’t Beat This Price,” the sign said.

But of course, you can.

You can beat it if you don’t buy the item.

Which will be part of Friday’s story about the Christmas season ahead.

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MARTINSBURG, West Virginia (CNN)– “The most divided this country has ever been.”

You hear that phrase tossed around almost casually from time to time during this presidential campaign. Usually it is used to point out the ugliness into which the campaign sometimes has descended.

And, indeed, with the occasional campaign-season talk of what and what does not constitute the “real America,” and of which candidate is the most loyal to the values of the United States, the rhetoric by supporters of both candidates does tend to get more than a little unpleasant, even inflammatory.

But the most divided the country has ever been?

Please.

One of the most heartening features of traveling the campaign not six miles in the air aboard a candidate’s jet, but at ground level as this television-studio-inside-a-bus moves block by block, town by town across the nation, is seeing certain things you would never get the chance to notice above the clouds.

And there have been moments that have served as a sobering reminder that, as far as the concept of residing in a divided United States goes, we who live here today are not even close.

During several different weeks we have passed across the Mason-Dixon Line.

It’s still there, at least in theory; there are signs near the road that tell you you’re crossing over.

The Mason-Dixon Line, in American history, was the symbolic boundary between the states where slavery was a way of life, and the states where it was not.

It was a real line; it was established in the 1760s by surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to resolve a border dispute between colonies controlled by the British. The Mason-Dixon Line, as originally drawn, formed parts of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and what is now known as West Virginia, but was then the western part of Virginia.

It later gained its notoriety as the great dividing line between the North and the South; some people believe that the word “Dixie” was derived from Jeremiah Dixon’s name.

So to cross the Mason-Dixon Line today is to understand that, no matter how heated the political discourse may become in the waning weeks of a campaign, the divide that we as Americans face in 2008 is, in perspective, nothing.

And. . . one day on the bus, there was this:

We were in Franklin County, Pennsylvania (we had crossed the Mason-Dixon Line to get there). In the center of the town of Chambersburg, near the county courthouse, was a memorial fountain, and, standing next to it, a statue of a Union soldier, facing south.

Chambersburg, a stop on the Underground Railroad, was, on July 30, 1864, burned to the ground by soldiers of the Confederate Army under the command of Brigadier General John McCausland. Chambersburg was said to be the only Northern city to be destroyed– turned to ashes– by Confederate forces.

After the town was burned, and then eventually rebuilt, the statue of the Union soldier, gazing in the direction of the Mason-Dixon Line, was erected to symbolically guard the citizens against a repeat attack.

All of this, in the United States of America. And you don’t have to go back to Civil War days to be reminded of how far the country has come; on this journey toward Election Day we have passed through states in which, during the lifetimes of some of us riding the bus, drinking fountains and restrooms were routinely labeled “White” and “Colored.”

This country is partisan, and sometimes all of us can get a little stupid in how we treat those who don’t agree with our particular points of view. But next time you’re tempted to use hyperbole in talking about how much we’re always at each others’ throats, figuratively, pause for a few moments.

Divided? This nation was once split in two. There are signs by the side of the road, and a motionless soldier on a small-town square, to remind us of where we’ve been, on the way to where we’re all still going.

Sen. John McCain greets supporters at a rally last week in Woodbridge, Virginia.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS (CNN)

With only two weeks until Election Day, it's safe to say that Sen. John McCain has quite a few things on his mind.

So he's undoubtedly not paying excessive attention to the music that is played at his campaign rallies.

Still ... the selection of songs does raise a few intriguing questions.

On a recent campaign morning, we pulled into Woodbridge, Virginia, to cover a McCain speech. We got there early, because the bus was going to be putting its rooftop satellite dish up in order to broadcast the afternoon event live.

So we were there for hours before McCain arrived - including the hours when the crowd was being warmed up by songs blasting over a public address system.

Now ... nothing against the songs themselves. Fine songs, all of them.

But the choice, and the pacing....

One of the first to be played was "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins. "Danger Zone" is often heard in National Basketball Association arenas, when the home team is in big trouble. It's a sign of a possible impending defeat for the good guys:

"Right into the Danger Zone. ..."

FULL STORY

John McCain at a campaign rally in Woodbridge, VA

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WOODBRIDGE, Virginia (CNN)– The late David Brinkley had a three-word phrase, ideal in its economy, that he used to sum up the chaos and seeming mayhem of a presidential campaign:

"Somehow, it works."

On a chilly afternoon in Virginia, we were parked directly in the back of the site of a John McCain rally. This was at the Prince William County government complex; from the windows of the bus we could see the crowd gathered in front of the stage.

On one of the ten television monitors that line an interior wall of the bus, John McCain was saying to his audience: "I have fought for you all my life."

He was somewhere else. The speech was on tape, but was being seen on this television broadcast right now by far more people than would see him here when he eventually arrived.

In the parking lot, a local television reporter was asking a McCain supporter, who was just entering the rally, a question about Barack Obama:

"Do you think he would be dangerous if elected?"

"Absolutely," the supporter said, then headed toward the stage where McCain would, in an hour or two, stand.

The invocation was delivered; the prayer was followed immediately and seamlessly by a chant from the crowd: "U.S.A! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"

The preliminary speakers, as speakers of both sides during political campaigns will do, were leveling charges that in any other setting would seem odd and harsh, but during the final weeks before an election are almost expected, boilerplate:

"Gross incompetence. . .a budget bigger than the government of Afghanistan's. . . ."

In two weeks, these gatherings on behalf of both parties will all be gone. The bloodless verbal town-to-town fighting will be over, instant civic nostalgia.

Not yet, though. In Woodbridge, a former governor of Virginia, Jim Gilmore, now running for the U.S. Senate, told the crowd that the public opinion polls were "being used" to discourage Virginians from voting. There were perhaps 4,000 people standing in the chilly afternoon air early in the
proceedings; by the end of the rally, estimates would range up to 8,000-10,000.

It was a crowd that seemed to be vibrant and full of enthusiasm, giving the impression, to those here, that this was the center of the political world. Inside the bus, though, being shown live on one of the 10 screens, was a video feed from St. Louis. Barack Obama was in his shirtsleeves; it appeared to be a warmer day in Missouri. The preliminary estimate of the crowd there,
it was reported, was 100,000.

"This campaign is about you," the faraway Obama said to the faraway hundred thousand.

In Virginia a local campaign official tossed baseball caps to the audience. There was considerable frenzy.

John McCain's motorcade suddenly pulled up to the side of the stage.

Soon he was at the microphone, and, for the first time of this visit this
day, was saying to the people who were standing and looking at him:

"My friends. . . ."

There was a boy of no more than seven or eight, standing near the rear of the crowd with his parents. He was wearing a Cub Scout uniform: blue and gold.

John McCain said:

"I'm going to make the government live on a budget just like you do!"

The Cub Scout, reacting to the cheers around him, yelled his approval toward McCain, endorsing his fiscal plan.

Toward the front of the audience, there was a small commotion. A young man was being pulled out of the crowd; he was limp, dead weight, and his feet dragged against the ground.

At first it seemed that he might be a protester, but it soon became evident that he was ill. On a patch of grass to the side of the stage he was placed on his back and medical emergency workers tried to speak to him.

John McCain almost certainly had not been able to see the young man; he was still at the microphone, speaking to another part of the crowd:

"We will drill now. . . ."

The audience chanted:

"Drill, baby, drill. . ."

I moved up toward the young man, to see if he was even alive.

McCain was moving into the final minutes of his speech:

". . .invest in clean coal technology. . . ."

The young man seemed to be coming to; he was stirring a little.

". . .My friends," McCain exhorted the audience, "we've got them just where we want them. . . ."

The piece of ground upon which the young man was on his back, as it turned out, was not far from the vehicle inside which McCain would be driven away from the event. The security cordon provided by the Secret Service and local law enforcement was such that, as McCain walked from the stage and greeted the audience, he was facing the opposite direction from the young man, and could
not have known he was there.

The young man was placed upon a stretcher. McCain greeted the people in the front rows of the audience. After all the months of appearing before them on television every night, after all the debates with their tens of millions of viewers, here he was, a man in a dark sport coat and a checked shirt open at the neck, passing briefly through a Virginia town on an afternoon growing
cloudy.

As all experienced candidates will do, he greeted each new face in the crowd with an expression of surprised delight, as if encountering someone, someone valued, utterly unexpectedly. Two more weeks of this, two more weeks of faces and outreached hands. His was a face in the crowd, too, for a few minutes he was a life-sized man among other life-sized men and women, but the only one among them who may be president.

Somehow it works. The young man who had collapsed was attended to, the presidential candidate was driven away, the Cub Scout who had cheered the idea of budgetary restraint left the county complex with his family, and the political afternoon was at an end. It works.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

Mike Ditka's chose not to run against Barak Obama for the Senate in 2004.

HAGERSTOWN, Maryland (CNN)– With barely over two weeks left until Election Day, and Barack Obama ahead in the polls, a sudden thought occurred as we were rolling through Pennsylvania and Maryland:

Could Mike Ditka, the former head coach of the Chicago Bears, have changed the course of U.S. history?

It’s not that farfetched a question. Briefly, in the summer of 2004, Ditka was being pursued by Illinois and national Republican leaders to step in and run for the United States Senate against a newcomer to the political big leagues: Barack Obama, an Illinois state senator.

Jack Ryan, who was expected to be the Republican nominee on the November ballot in the Illinois race that year, had dropped out, and his party was scrambling for a replacement. They approached Ditka; he gave it serious consideration, and then, citing family and business obligations, said no.

The Republicans, in a puzzling move, then recruited Alan Keyes to come to Illinois from Maryland to run against Obama. Obama trounced Keyes, and now, if everything goes his way, may be a few weeks away from the presidency.

But what if Ditka had chosen to oppose Obama four years ago– and what if he had defeated Obama and been elected to the U.S. Senate?

“It would have been interesting, I'll tell you that,” Ditka said over the phone. From our journey on the campaign road I had called him in Chicago, to see if he, too, had thought about what might have been.

“I don’t know what would have happened if I had run,” Ditka, 69, said. “I really don’t. Could I have beaten him? Maybe. Maybe not.”

A lot of people in Illinois thought Ditka had a pretty good chance to win, had he accepted the invitation to run. Remember: four years ago, Obama was a relative unknown. He was back in the state senate after having been defeated badly in a 2000 primary in which he sought to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ditka, on the other hand, was one of the most famous– and in many, many places, beloved– people in the state of Illinois. He was controversial, yes, but that’s what his admirers liked about him. He was instantly recognizable in every corner of the state– he would have drawn enormous crowds to rallies. Mike Ditka, the icon, against Barack Obama, the novice?

“I am who I am,” Ditka told me. “People know that.”

Had Ditka run and won, there isn’t a way in the world that Obama would have been in the race for the White House now. And history would have been completely rewritten.

Ditka, by the way, is no home-field supporter of the presidential candidate from Illinois.

“I’m a staunch conservative,” he said. “You can’t fool me about socialism and the welfare state. I’m solid for McCain and Palin.”

So does he have any regrets about not running against Obama back in ‘04?

“If the wrong person gets into the White House, I’ll regret it,” Ditka said.

Then I take it he’s not a fan of Obama?

“Not at all,” he said.

Of his decision not to enter electoral politics, Ditka said:

“Politics is an interesting business. A lot of good people stay out of politics for one reason or another. They don’t like to get kicked around, and have all the dirt thrown at them. There’s so much cruelty in politics right now– it’s wrong to do those kinds of things to people's families. There have been a lot of great leaders in this world, going back to Alexander. And there are no perfect people.”

Had he run, and had the voters of Illinois elected him, instead of Obama, to the U.S. Senate, Ditka said he is certain of one thing: “I would have worked hard for them. I’m a patriot. We have been a guardian of the world, like it or not."

No one will ever know what might have happened. It’s hard to remember now just how little known Obama was four years ago– and it’s impossible to overstate just how renowned, in Chicago and in Illinois, Ditka was.

So, Coach? If you had decided to run? Do you think the political world would be in a completely different place right now, as Campaign ‘08 nears its end?

“We didn’t do it,” Ditka said. “So I don't know.”

Many voters are looking down the road to the end of the long presidential campaign season.

ABOARD THE CNN ELECTION EXPRESS (CNN)

"You're kidding me, right?"

The speaker was a man named Derrick Stefford, 32. We had not, as a matter of fact, been kidding. We had merely been asking him the question that we've been asking people as we cross the country.

"If you're really not kidding," Stefford said, looking as if, hearing our words, he wanted to cross the street as quickly as possible, "my answer is: I can't wait until it's over."

The theory - one that has been shot down repeatedly since the first time we asked the question - was that this year's presidential campaign has been so compelling, has generated such high television ratings, has been the topic of so many conversations, that it has become a part of the very atmosphere.

The campaign has been like oxygen, or the sky - it's just there, all the time.

Thus, the question: Will you miss the campaign when it's gone?

FULL STORY

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HEMPSTEAD, New York (CNN) – Joe the Plumber, get ready. Your wild ride has just begun.

If past is prologue, you have no idea what's about to hit you.

Joe the Plumber, of course, is Joe Wurzelbacher, whose name came up so many times at last night's final presidential debate here that it seemed as if the people in the hall, the tens of millions watching around the country, and moderator Bob Schieffer were just getting in the way of what John McCain and Barack Obama really wanted to do.

They just wanted to speak to Joe. And they gazed right into the camera lens and did exactly that.

Mr. Wurzelbacher, you may have just become the next Vicki Lynne Cole.

If you've never heard of her, she once lived right down the road from you. And she's the prime example of what can happen when presidential campaigns find useful symbolism in the words of a citizen by the side of the trail.

Forty years ago this month, during the final stages of Richard Nixon's campaign against Hubert Humphrey, his campaign train stopped briefly in the town of Deshler, Ohio, population 2,000. It's about 45 miles southwest of Toledo, the part of Ohio where Joe Wurzelbacher lives.

Vicki Lynne Cole was an 8th grader who went to Nixon's whistle-stop. Evidently, at her school, the call had gone out for volunteers to serve as "Nixonettes."

She had made a sign to hold up– something about Lyndon Johnson and Nixon–but lost it, and picked another one off the ground. Reportedly she didn't look at it before she held it up.

"Bring Us Together Again," the sign said.

Well. . . .

It remains unclear whether Nixon himself actually noticed the sign, but someone on his staff did.

And before long, Vicki Cole, 13 years old, became one of the stars of the presidential campaign.

"I saw many signs in this campaign. . . ."

That's how Nixon would usually lead in to his invocation of Vicki Cole. The sign in Deshler, Ohio, he told crowds, would motivate him and would become the theme of his presidency. If he were elected, he would never forget the inspiration he had received from Vicki. He would bring the nation together.

Soon enough, the word "again" was dropped from campaign references to Vicki 's sign. "Bring us together" were the words Nixon used. He talked about Vicki in Madison Square Garden; he talked about Vicki at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.

You see what may be coming, Joe?

When Nixon won the election, and plans for his inauguration were announced, press reports said that there would be 56 marching bands, 39 floats, the French Dukes Drill Team, three Lipizzaner horses. . .and Vicki Lynne Cole.

Vicki's words, Nixon said, would be "the great objective of this administration."

(Soon enough, though, "Bring Us Together" was amended to "Forward Together." Vicki's sign had been run through political rewrite.)

So, Joe. . . .

You're in it now, whether that's what you really want or not.

Enjoy it. Hope you like Lipizzaner horses.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

Sal Vokshi has not made up his mind about who he will vote for.

HEMPSTEAD, New York (CNN)– For some Americans, watching the presidential debates is considerably more than a spectator sport.

Sal Vokshi, 37, grew up in Tirana, Albania. He departed while still in his teens, he said, because he wanted two things: to leave behind the memory of the Communist rule he knew as a boy, and to seek what he trusted in his heart would be a better life in the United States.

He said he has achieved both goals.

“I have been a citizen of the United States long enough that I have voted in two presidential elections," he said. “George W. Bush, both times.”

What he remembers with the most emotion is not the particular man for whom he voted, but the excitement and pride he felt in casting his ballot.

“You would have to come from a place like the place I come from to understand," he said.

He is a waiter in a local restaurant; he has the night off tonight, so he can watch John McCain and Barack Obama debate.

He hasn’t made up his mind yet. Neither man can be sure of his vote.

Until tonight.

“Tonight is the final decision for me,” he said.

He is carefully weighing both choices.

“McCain makes me feel more secure about the country," he said. “Obama is always talking about how he wants to take troops out of places, and not waste money on war. I think McCain may be right.”

But on health care, he said he much prefers Obama’s positions.

“He seems to care about middle-class people,” he said. “I have a home, a wife, two little girls, age four and age two. But I don’t have health insurance. Maybe waiters at Chili’s and Applebee’s get it, I don’t know, but where I work I don’t have it.”

So when he gets sick. . . .

“I pay the doctor with a check, or a credit card,” he said. “But sometimes I worry about what would happen to me if I get really sick, or if I fall. That‘s what I will be listening for in the debate tonight– what they will say about health care for people like my family and me."

He said he and his family live about ten minutes from Hofstra University, where the debate will be held.

“I know I have no chance of seeing it in person there,” he said. “The New York Jets have their summer practice at Hofstra, and I go watch the practices all the time. It‘s free. It was a lot easier to see Brett Favre in person at Hofstra than it would be to see McCain or Obama.”

Whoever wins Sal Vokshi’s vote tonight, he said, the real thrill will come in less than three weeks, when, for the third time in his life, he will step behind the curtains to vote for a president of the United States.

He still speaks with an accent. When people ask him about it, he says:

“This is my country. This is my country.”

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

Inside the Spin Room at the final presidential debate.

HEMPSTEAD, New York (CNN)– There are reasons, I was told, for a person to
watch a presidential debate even though he thinks the chances are zero that
his mind will be changed.

The four pastors I encountered in Hempstead preside, they said, over four
African-American churches. They introduced themselves:

The Reverend William A. Watson Jr., 61, of St. John's Baptist Church in Westbury.

The Reverend William Thomas, 66, of St. John's Baptist Church in West Hempstead.

The Reverend Cornelius Watson, 56, of Cedar of Lebanon Baptist Church in Brooklyn. The Reverend Alvin Barnett, 71, of West Baptist Church in Brooklyn.

From the four pastors, Barack Obama will be receiving four votes.

Yet tonight, although their votes will not be in play, each of the four
pastors will be sitting in front of a television set.

"It's important that I watch, for when my congregation asks me questions,"
Reverend William Watson said. "I want to have informed answers."

He said he senses that something profound may be about to happen.

"These are important days in which we are living," he said.

The four men do not know Obama, and he does not know them. A younger man
than they are, he seemingly emerged from nowhere.

And– this is just behind every word they say, and every word that goes
unsaid– November 4, regardless of the outcome, looms ahead like no
Election Day
in their lifetimes, and no Election Day they ever quite believed they would
see.

Reverend Thomas said there is nothing he would rather do tonight than, on
television, watch what happens at Hofstra University.

He will be watching, he said, "to make sure Obama maintains his dignity,
his credibility, his ethics."

Does he have any doubts?

"He never ceases to amaze me."

In what way?

"In a good way," Reverend Thomas said. "I watch him and I always walk
away feeling proud. He just continues to go uphill."

He said he will spend the full 90 minutes concentrating on the debate not
out of a sense of duty, or of civic responsibility.

For him, he said, it is something more basic.

"I enjoy watching him up there," he said. "Listening to him speak. It's
an inspiration. As I say: I feel proud every time."

Hofstra University is the site of the final presidential debate.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

HEMPSTEAD, New York (CNN)– Manny Stein, 78, and Don Raider, 72, old buddies, were having lunch together, as is their custom, at the Golden Reef Diner on Sunrise Highway.

They not only can finish each other’s sentences, sometimes they don’t even have to say the sentences. They’ve known each other that long.

How long?

“Don’t ask,” said Manny Stein.

They will both watch the debate tonight. No question about that.

“I’ve watched all of them," Manny Stein said. “Start to finish, and more.”

More than start to finish?

“I watch them again when they replay them,” he said.

He’s for Barack Obama, he said. Nothing that happens in tonight’s debate will change his mind.

“I just want to see the twists and turns," he said.

“He wants to see the twists and turns," Don Raider said.

“I’m sticking with my guy," Manny Stein said. Meaning Obama.

“But maybe if the other guy does well, I won’t have such a low opinion of him,” he said. Meaning McCain.

Don Raider, on the other hand, is very much for McCain.

“Despite that, I still speak to him anyway,” said Manny Stein. Referring to his friend.

And how long have you two been friends?

“Too long,” said Don Raider.

He said he plans to watch tonight’s debate “until it gets ridiculous."

Meaning?

“When they start going on and on with the rhetoric, and saying the same lines they’ve said before.”

But if he knows that he will be voting for McCain, why sit through the debate?

“I’m hoping for a startling revelation, not that it will happen," he said.

What kind of startling revelation?

“Like one of them, instead of just saying what the problems in the country are, will actually say how he’s going to fix the problems,” he said.

“They do say that,” Manny Stein said.

“When?” Don Raider said.

The two said they will be watching the debate separately, at their respective homes.

“Every minute of it,” Manny Stein said.

“If it doesn‘t get too ridiculous,” Don Raider said.

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN)– There are times when this presidential campaign feels as if it has been going on forever, and sometimes you half-believe that it will, in fact, never end.

And then comes a moment like the one the other afternoon at the edge of the west lawn of the United States Capitol.

Tourists crowded the sidewalks and gazed across the expanse of grass at the grandeur of the white dome. Some were with families– Robert and Martha Cohen, of Framingham, Massachusetts, had brought their grandchildren to see the historic sites. Some had traveled from distant nations to get a firsthand look at Washington, and their spoken languages intermingled in the warm October air.

None of them were going to get to walk across that lawn, though, because metal fences had been linked securely together, then tied in turn to green storm fencing, cutting off all access.

That the Capitol lawn was sealed off was not particularly surprising; the rule of thumb in Washington, especially since September 11, 2001, has essentially been: the more precious the federal property, the more difficult it is for citizens to just wander around on it or in it.

But the Capitol lawn had been locked off to pedestrian traffic for a specific reason. On one of the metal fences was a sign with these words:

“By Order of the United States Capitol Police Board, this area is closed for construction of the 2009 Presidential Inauguration Site.”

That’s just how short time is getting. Tonight, in Hempstead, New York, Barack Obama and John McCain will debate one last time, each hoping that the other will stumble, each trying to be the one who will be taking the oath of office in January.

And meanwhile, laborers at the Capitol, who don’t have time to wait for the voting results, have begun working on the structure for the day in January when the 44th president will be sworn in. It’s going to be just that soon.

Down the National Mall on this day, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial rose as they do every day above other plots of grass; once in a great while this country produces a president for whom we build monuments like those. Near the west lawn of the Capitol, some visitors, unable to go any farther, turned around and gazed upon Franklin Simmons’ 1878 Peace Monument. The official description of the monument– the description put on display near its base by the U.S. government– reads, in part:

“At the top of the 44-foot monument, Grief, sometimes called America, weeps on the shoulder of History.”

A dark thought on a sunlit day. A few feet away more families were approaching the point beyond which they could not pass, and were silently reading the words:

“. . . closed for construction of the 2009 Presidential Inauguration Site.“

We departed for Long Island in the state of New York, where tonight two men will debate.

ABOARD THE CNN ELECTION EXPRESS (CNN)– The attention spans of the two competing presidential campaign organizations being what they are, all political thought now is being given to tomorrow night's debate in Hempstead, New York.

Last week's town hall debate in Nashville, Tennessee, already seems like it took place a thousand years ago, and has been all but forgotten.

It shouldn't be.

Because Americans with whom we have been speaking on our way across the country have a surprisingly strong and continuing reaction to what they saw at the Nashville debate. And what they saw, they tell us - what they saw and were offended by - was this:

The rudeness by Barack Obama and John McCain toward the citizens who had been selected to ask questions of the two men - citizens who, perhaps foolishly, trusted that the candidates would play by the rules they had agreed to.

"I thought both McCain and Obama were arrogant," said Jennifer Eaton, 43, of Cleveland, Ohio. "I was frustrated for the men and women who had been told that they would be allowed to ask the candidates questions - and then had to sit there and eventually go home without asking, because the candidates kept breaking the rules by talking and talking and talking."

The rules in Nashville - agreed to in advance by both campaigns - called for brief (two-minute) answers, and very brief (one-minute) follow-up comments, to the questions asked by the citizens. This would allow as many of the men and women as possible to present their questions to the two men, one of whom will be the next president.

FULL STORY

Bill Sauer Field in Logan, OH

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ohio (CNN)– Sometimes on weekend nights, as we drive through the country, we will see the lights from small-town football stadiums.

We are usually on our way from one campaign stop to the next. Virtually every day on the trail, the candidates for president and vice president talk about the need for America to find its best and most worthy incarnation– while at the same time the campaigns spew the most cynical and angry kind of vitriol at the other side. Their belief seems to be, as usual, that the strongest and most blusteringly confident will prevail.

With this in mind, as we drove at night thought this part of Ohio, I thought about the town of Logan, down the road to the east. And about how much the campaigns, and all of us, might learn from the quiet story of what happened at the old football stadium there.

Before that stadium goes away forever.

Bill Sauer Field has long been the center of town life in Logan, population 7,300. The high school football team– the Chieftains– has always been the focus, and pride, of the town.

Who is Bill Sauer, for whom the stadium was named?

A local politician? A car dealer who paid for its construction? A former superintendent?

None of those.

Bill Sauer, born in Logan in 1908, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at an early age. His parents searched in vain for a medical miracle; Bill never was able to walk, and spoke with great difficulty. He asked for no special consideration at Logan High School, and, because of his health problems, he was 23 before he graduated.

What he loved most was the school’s sports programs, in which he could never play. Craig Dunn, the sports editor of the Logan Daily News, told me that Bill never missed a game, seldom missed a practice– football, basketball, track and field. In his wheelchair on the sidelines, he cheered his swift, healthy classmates.

It continued after he graduated. His father died; Bill supported both himself and his mother. He operated a candy store near a church; he ran the concessions stand at the city swimming pool; he sold Christmas cards and magazine subscriptions.

And he was at virtually every Logan game.

In rural America at that time in the nation’s history, it must have been an especially difficult life for a young man with his disabilities. In Logan, they embraced him. When he was a senior in high school, the coach of the football team, Red Longley, surprised Bill, who was unable to stand on his own, by awarding him a varsity letter.

But the best moment was to come later in his life. In 1975, the town decided to bestow upon Bill Sauer its ultimate honor.

The football stadium– built in 1925, the core of Logan, its heart– was, on its fiftieth anniversary, renamed.

For him.

Bill Sauer Field.

In our society, cities, and fans, are expected– sometimes almost required, it seems– to fall in love with their football teams. In Logan, a town, and its football teams, fell in love with a fan.

Until his death in 1988, Bill Sauer continued to attend games at Bill Sauer Field. Few outside the community knew about all this, but it wasn’t something that was done for those outside the community. It was done by Logan, Ohio, for Logan, Ohio.

We hear a lot on the campaign trail about challenging ourselves to be decent and compassionate. About looking out for our neighbors.

The campaign speeches end, and the candidates move on.

Yet sometimes, in places we least expect it, we find the most towering examples of just how good we can be if we open our eyes to those among us who don’t solicit our applause, but who are most deserving of our encouragement, of our gratitude– of our love.

Bill Sauer Field in recent years had finally deteriorated to the point where it was considered too out-of-date. This autumn, out near State Route 328, a new and glistening athletic complex has gone up.

The crumbling football stadium is being torn down even as you read these words. By next season Bill Sauer Field will be completely demolished, just a memory.

But what a memory.

And– during a campaign that asks us to find our truest and most giving selves– what a lesson.

The Time magazine cover featuring Richard Nixon.

ABOARD THE CNN ELECTION EXPRESS (CNN) - Sometimes it seems that the best thing you can be in a presidential election is the new guy.

The new guy represents, almost automatically, that magic word: Change.

Sen. Barack Obama was the new guy when he launched his run for the presidency, and change was his calling card.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, when she joined Sen. John McCain's ticket, suddenly became - gender notwithstanding - the newer new guy. She talks almost every day about how she and McCain are the real agents of change.

But if there is anything that is traditional and abiding in presidential politics, it is the promise of change. It's like the word "New" on boxes in grocery store aisles: As a promotional tool, the allure of change is old-shoe.

So, in this election season of new guys and declarations of change - this season of Obama and Palin and their sudden ascents - it may be instructive for us to step away for a moment from the frenzy of the final weeks of the campaign, and to remind ourselves that everyone, in presidential politics as in life, was at some point the new guy.

With that in mind I looked for a copy of the first Time magazine to feature Richard Nixon on its cover. Nixon would go on to appear on Time's cover on more than 50 occasions, some happier than others.

But for every new guy, there is a first time (and for every presidential new guy, there is a first Time) - and Nixon's first was the edition of August 25, 1952. He was 39 years old, on the Republican ticket as Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice presidential nominee.

FULL STORY

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Robert Duncan remains unmoved by either candidate

GOODLETTSVILLE, Tennessee (CNN)– Certainly there must be people in Tennessee who watched this week's Nashville presidential debate, felt inspired and exhilarated by what they saw on the stage, and came away newly energized about the campaign.

We’ll let you know when we find them.

Until then. . . .

“As of right now, I’m not going to vote for either one of them,” said Robert Duncan, 56.

He knew when the debate started that he was not going to vote for Barack Obama.

“There’s not a chance,” he said. “Too liberal.”

He thought the debate might persuade him to vote for John McCain.

“He could have convinced me," Duncan said.

But he said that he found McCain’s performance to be “arrogant and deceptive,” and that, with the choice on November 4 being between McCain and Obama, “at this point I’d rather not vote.”

He was having lunch with his ex-wife, Robin, 35, at a Cracker Barrrel when we spoke with them on our way north to the next debate in Hempstead, New York. Robin Duncan said that she is an Obama supporter, but that the performance of both Obama and McCain in the Tennessee debate left her cold.

“I would have been happy if Obama had taken the opportunity to show that he really stands for something, with real conviction,” she said. “But so often he just seems to sway about things. I would have loved for the country to have seen him and to have been completely sure that he should be president. But I don’t know that the country saw that."

Both Robert and Robin Duncan said that, as they looked at the stage in Nashville during the televised debate, they had an uneasy feeling that they didn’t see the next president of the United States standing there.

Of course, they almost certainly did.

“I know," Robert Duncan said. “I’ll vote in my local elections in November. But from what I saw, I just don’t have a desire to vote for president.”

Roger and Linda Crady enjoy lunch and talk presidential politics

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SUMNER COUNTY, Tennessee– The day-after reviews by people in Tennessee to the presidential debate in Nashville last night are not exactly scintillating.

At least that’s what we’re finding as we leave the state on our way to the next debate in Hempstead, New York.

“I fell asleep during the debate last night,” said Roger Crady, 57. “It bored me to death."

He is an Obama supporter, he said, and he wanted to be electrified by his candidate’s performance. But the evening, he said, was more effective than an Ambien pill. The debate induced a peaceful slumber.

“I was hoping that John McCain would do such a good job that he would come off as the clear choice for president," said his wife, Linda, 53. She supports McCain and, before the debate, was full of enthusiasm about his prospects.

“Obama is a great speaker, and he has the charisma,” she said. “But to me, McCain is more genuine in how he cares about people. I wanted that to come through, but I’m not sure that it did.”

Unlike her husband, she managed to stay awake for the entire 90 minutes– but at times it was a struggle. “I’m not impressed by candidates just quoting memorized percentages and figures,” she said. “I think both of them gave a lot of the same answers they had in their first debate. Even the same catchphrases."

Mr. and Mrs. Crady said they most likely will watch next week’s debate, and hope that the candidates give them reason not to doze.

“We’re probably not going to change our minds about who we want for president,” she said. “So in the end, no matter who wins the debate, we’ll cancel out each other’s votes."

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

A policeman directs traffic while awaiting a motorcade in Nashville.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN)– West End Avenue is clear again today. Traffic is flowing.

The candidates are gone. The second presidential debate is some kind of history; one more to go.

For 24 hours or so– from the night before the debate until deep into the night the debate was held– West End Avenue looked intermittently like the scene of an action-adventure movie with a predictable and frenzied plot:

Police cars screaming up and down the boulevard, dome lights flaring, sirens wailing. Helicopters whirring overhead. State and local officers on the corners, giving the cold eye to passersby. People pouring out of buildings, to see what the emergency might be.

We in this nation all know that it has been many years since political motorcades have had anything in common with John F. Kennedy waving from an open-top convertible as he and his wife roll merrily down the street. But it is still startling, every time you see it, to encounter what a modern-day motorcade has become.

“Who’s it going to be?” said Derrick Stefford, 32.

We were standing a little after 9 p.m., the night before the debate, outside Mrs. Winner’s, a fast-food chicken restaurant where he works.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It has to be one of them.”

“McCain,“ the cop on the corner, standing a few feet from us, said.

All traffic on West End had been halted, save for the squad cars roaring up and down, as if rehearsing for a dirt-track drive-in feature. The signs in front of the businesses on the street were conventional: Pizza Hut, Renasant Bank, Valentino’s Ristorante, Arby‘s. But it was a street with no cars.

“I was hoping for Obama,” Derrick Stefford said.

On the side streets, every lane of traffic was backed up. No one was getting onto West End. On 19th, the cars extended all the way back to Gigi’s Cupcakes and beyond. The faces of the drivers and their passengers behind the windshields were not placid. It’s a wonder any presidential candidate ever wins a single vote of the people stuck in traffic in the towns where they come to debate.

The goal of the town-hall-style debate in Nashville was to make the candidates’ visit seem as low-key and friendly and close to casual as possible, almost as if they just happened to be passing through the neighborhood. On debate night they would address the questioners in the audience: “Thank you, Oliver, that’s an excellent question.“ “Well, Teresa. . . .“ Not a hint of tension. Nice and easy.

At 9:18 the night before, the candidate, whoever he was, encased inside the motorcade on West End Avenue, came suddenly hurtling by, the purposely dizzying wash of lights and sound and gunning motors causing the people on the street to not really absorb what had happened until it was over.

“It was McCain,” Derrick Stefford said to me.

“It was McCain,” a woman who had gotten out of her boyfriend’s car said.

I couldn’t tell.

And today the traffic on the street is streaming smoothly, as we depart for Hempstead, New York, where, at the final debate next week, the streets will for a brief spell look like this one fleetingly did.

Polls show that the candidates are in a close race for the White House.

ABOARD THE CNN ELECTION EXPRESS (CNN)

There's something that Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama won't hear tonight.

They'll hear the words of Tom Brokaw, the moderator of the debate here in Nashville, Tennessee.

And they'll hear questions from some members of the audience, who will be permitted to speak at the town hall-style event.

They'll probably hear applause from people gathered outside to catch a glimpse of the arrival and departure of the next president.

But McCain and Obama will not hear what may be the most important voices of all:

The voices of people all across the United States, watching the debate at home, who will be talking at their television screens - addressing the candidates as if they know them, sometimes praising them, sometimes insulting them, often advising them.

Full Story

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN)– It’s the one thing the presidential candidates probably don’t think about.

Which is understandable– they’re stuck in the middle of their contest and in the middle of a global financial crisis, with the days until November 4 quickly growing fewer, like calendar pages in an old-time movie flying one-by-one into the wind.

The candidates are thinking about, and running for, history.

While what they’re also running for, in a seldom-mentioned but curiously moving sense, is to become permanent signposts in the lives of millions of people they will never meet . Something, years from now, those people will use to recall where they were at different junctures in their own lives. Remember that trip we took to the football game, and you lost all your luggage? Oh, I haven’t thought about that in a long time– wasn’t that the year Obama and McCain were running for president?

On the campus of Vanderbilt University over the weekend, with October temperatures in the eighties, the autumn air teased with a false promise that the world will always be warm and beautiful. Songs were blasting out of the fraternity and sorority houses along Kensington Place: songs by the Allman Brothers, songs by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, songs that would have been heard on college campuses 35 years ago, perhaps blasting from these very same fraternity houses.

It was the weekend of Vanderbilt’s football game against Auburn. In each city where we arrive for the debates, including tomorrow night’s debate in Nashville, we have become accustomed to the sight of television satellite trucks lined up on the streets. It provides the illusion that there is nothing more important in the country than that which we have come to cover.

But the satellite trucks the people at Vanderbilt cared about over the weekend were the ones in town to broadcast the football game. On residences all over campus, signs welcomed the wildly popular ESPN College GameDay show to Vanderbilt, the first time it had ever come here. (It is said that in this country any child can grow up to be president, but over the weekend, at least here, it seemed that what every child would really like to grow up to be is Kirk Herbstreit.)

These were glorious days in Nashville– parents’ weekend at Vanderbilt, the Celebration of Cultures Festival in Centennial Park, with music and food and crafts exhibits near the full-sized replica of the Parthenon. Afternoons to remember.

And one day the candidates– especially the one who becomes president– will serve as reminders of where these people were during these early-autumn days and nights. It’s one of the functions our presidents passively perform.

Marriages, the birth of children, divorces, jobs attained, jobs lost:

Oh, right. Carter was in the White House.

Wasn’t that the fall the first Bush got elected?

Remember? Clinton was president the year we did that.

The candidates– the ones who win, the ones who lose– undoubtedly don’t ruminate much about this role, because it is one they can’t control. A president may (or may not) be the most powerful person in the world– but in hundreds of millions of individual lives, a president is like an old song: something that, when it comes on the radio, reminds you of happy times or sorrowful moments in your own life.

It’s not a presidential duty specified in the Constitution– but in many ways it’s the most emotional presidential duty of all: to be a road sign in all those lives, something that helps us keep our sense of where we are on the twisting highway.

At Hawkins Field, the Vanderbilt baseball stadium, the team was going through fall practice in front of empty seats. A ball flew over the fence; one of the players, wearing black uniform jersey and white uniform pants, left the ballpark to go search for it in some hedges in front of a building across Jess Neely Drive.

In the college baseball stadium, the recorded voice of country singer Mark Wills was playing loudly through the public address speakers to keep the players company. Wills sang of days of thunder and magic summers, and some day these young men practicing baseball in the sun, when they are no longer young and no longer lucky enough to be playing baseball, will think back to where they were in October of 2008.

Oh. Of course.

Great times. Great weather. Great friendships.

Wasn’t that the autumn when Barack Obama and John McCain came to town?

There is history, and then there is history. Obama and McCain, even in the middle of all this, must on occasion look back upon certain days in their own younger lives.

And, remembering, think about who was president then.