Celeb-Spotting at Invesco.

Hey y’all. After a crack-of-the-morning flight out of Denver (which included a spry Mickey Dolenz and a tired-looking Hayden Panettiere), I’m back in VA now, have rested up, and have put up the rest of my Invesco pics over at Flickr. In case anyone’s interested, here are a few more thoughts about the milieu surrounding Thursday event:

Imagine the DC Nationals playing Game 7 of the World Series at home, and you may get somewhere close to the strangeness that was the stadium environment at Invesco Field. It was definitely a NFL or NBA stadium atmosphere, with all the usual concessions open. But, amid the pretzel vendors, lines for hot dogs, and Obama t-shirt stands, the place was also obviously teeming with DC-types — pols, journalists, celebrities, and of course their many, many handlers. So, if you walked around the concourse a few times (as I did during the Sheryl Crow set, for example), you were bound to see tons of notable people waiting anxiously in the condiment queue, and/or one of the gaggle of C-level talking heads “trying not to be seen,” hoping to be seen. It was all quite bizarre.

In lieu of a list of all the random people I saw wandering around, I’ll just give a few general impressions:

For whatever reason, I saw members of the MSNBC crew (Howard Fineman, Chris Matthews, Floyd Abrams) floating around a lot more often than the CNN gang, who seemed to stay ensconced in their assigned news-ghetto. (Matthews in particular was ubiquitous. He and Ron Brownstein seemed to live at The Tattered Cover.)

Gov. Ted Strickland had the exact same awkward look on his face in front of the Denver Broncos store that he did while Clinton harangued Obama a few months ago. Must be his tic.

Richard Dreyfuss was holding court over at the Air America nook, and — since someone had passed out promo cards for Oliver Stone’s W while we waited in line the requisite hour to get in — I asked “Vice-President Cheney” to sign it. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, but he hadn’t seen the teaser poster image at all. (I sometimes forget that for the people involved, movie making is just a job — They don’t feel inclined to follow all the ins and outs of the pre-release like we do.)

Y’know, I guess I owe Washington a bit of an apology. I was complaining the other day about the careerist myopia and general rudeness of DC politicos, but in the end it was a NYC-based historian who most exemplified District-style asshattery to my face. I went up to say hi to a (non-Columbia) academic who writes for several progressive publications, and with whom I’ve shared many a dinner over the past few years, as part of a 20th Century Politics & Society Workshop that I served as rapporteur for. (“Rapporteur” is basically the three-dollar way in graduate school to say “The One who Brings the Food.”) When I said hello and held out my hand, he looked me up and down, gave me the cut direct, and — in true DC form — just turned away to find somebody more important. I guess such behavior comes with the territory sometimes…still, I thought it was pretty goddamned rude.

Word on the street was a lot of A-lister celebrities were out and about: Charlize Theron, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Oprah Winfrey, Brad and Angelina, and the like. I didn’t see anybody of that sort, but then again I didn’t go anywhere near the skyboxes.

I did run into Jim Clyburn, my old representative, and got in a shout-out for Flotown. (Florence, SC — his beat, and the place where I grew up.) He seemed nice, as always.

I also ran into Bill Press, the democratic pundit with whom I’ve worked on four books over the years. We got to catch up for a bit, as it turned out our seats were really close to each other.

Nothing against Sheryl Crow, but her set was the time I spent walking around to soak up the ambience. That being said, seeing Stevie Wonder perform “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” was great fun. And, if you’d had told me that one day I would willingly join a crowd of 80,000 to sing along with Michael McDonald, I’d never have believed you. Never say never, I guess. (I was very glad to hear we Dems roll with “America the Beautiful” rather than “God Bless America,” which we can expect in heavy rotation at the RNC next week, I’m sure.)

And, finally, the moment when I was probably the most starstruck at Invesco was when I was edging back to my seat and none other than Wendell Pierce, a.k.a. The Bunk, flew past me. Now, there’s a pic I’d like to have gotten (and I’d love to have picked his brain about David Simon’s forthcoming Treme, but ah well.) Denver ain’t Aruba either, I guess…but Thursday night, it sometimes felt pretty darned close.

Our Five-Year Mission…

“Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

Do you remember the Iraq War of 2003? Remember those heady days of euphoria when it ended two months later, with only 139 American lives lost? Journey back with me — TIME-LIFE style, if you will — to the scene of our triumph: “Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a ‘hero’ and boomed, ‘He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.’ PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was ‘part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.’ On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, ‘The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a — on a carrier landing. This must be very meaningful to the United States military.’“

Well, today marks the five-year anniversary of our glorious victory, the day that “splendid little war” came to a close. Among those honoring the day, and the remarkable achievement of our Commander-in-Chief:

Sen. Barack Obama: “Five years after George Bush declared ‘mission accomplished’ and John McCain told the American people that ‘the end is very much in sight’ in Iraq, we have lost thousands of lives, spent half a trillion dollars, and we’re no safer. It’s time to turn the page on Washington’s false promises and failed judgments on foreign policy, so that we can finally ease the enormous burdens on our troops and their families, and end a war that should’ve never been authorized.“

Sen. Hillary Clinton: “The fifth anniversary of President Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech comes the same week as a chief architect of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq conceded ‘We were clueless on counterinsurgency.‘ That statement confirms what we have all known: the planning and strategy was flawed. Our troops deserved and deserve better.“

DNC head Howard Dean: “The real mission George Bush is trying to accomplish is passing the torch of his failed Iraq policy to John McCain, who has made it clear he’s willing to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years against the wishes of the American people. This November the choice will be very clear: if you want to get out of Iraq responsibly, save lives and invest in America, vote for a Democrat.“

Sen. John McCain: “To state the obvious, I thought it was wrong at the time [SIC]…all of those comments contributed over time to the frustration and sorrow of Americans because those statements and comments did not comport with the facts on the ground. In hearing after hearing in the Armed Services Committee and forums around America I complained loud and long that the strategy was failing and we couldn’t succeed … Obviously the presidents bare the responsibility. We all do. But do I blame him for that specific banner? I have no knowledge of that. I can’t blame him for that.”

The White House: “‘President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished’ for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,’ White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. ‘And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.’“

The American people: “A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president. ‘No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president’s disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark,’ said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.“

3925 American lives: …

Buddy Systems and Reverse Muskies.

“I was laughing because you know in that debate, obviously Sen. Edwards and Sen. Obama were kind of in the buddy system on the stage.” Having “found her voice” in yesterday’s surprising comeback in New Hampshire, and with the politics of gender clearly coming up aces, Senator Clinton continues with the new winning theme. Buddy system? Sigh…It doesn’t exactly put the b in subtle, does it? Well, this approach seemed to backfire with the “six guys against one strong woman” debate spin of a few months ago. And I can’t say I much prefer Clinton, the skewerer of false hopes and purveyor of the “reality check.” Still, one hopes these blatant appeals to identity politics get dropped relatively soon, and that the Obama campaign doesn’t get caught up in the same game in South Carolina. It’s usually a depressing and polarizing business.

In another interview with FOX News today, Senator Clinton gave her own view of the Reverse Muskie. (By the way, how dismaying is it that this random moment of lip-quavering ended up being the defining moment of New Hampshire 2008? Now we’ll have to relive this bizarre non-story every four years. And it wasn’t even Clinton’s first semi-tear of the campaign — That was on Day 1 of the The Hillary I Know campaign retooling, back in December. It’s a strange world sometimes.)

In any event, her take on the moment: “Maybe I have liberated us to actually let women be human beings in public.” Um…ok, a few things here. First, in keeping with XX Factor’s Rachael Larimore’s recent observation that “Obama is the ‘we’ candidate; Hillary is the ‘me’ candidate,” this is a remarkably self-aggrandizing I-statement. (Let’s see, there’s Seneca Falls, the Nineteenth Amendment, ERA, The Feminine Mystique, the founding of NOW…and the Reverse Muskie? One of these things does not belong.) Second, it must be said: “Liberated” — a word with special import for the older women voters who put Clinton over the top in New Hampshire — seems all too likely to be another unnuanced stab at the dog-whistle, niche politicking that inspired “buddy system.” Third, it would seem the general consensus — not just from the invidious mainstream media but from Clinton supporters too — that, far from smashing down a previously impenetrable social barrier by showing emotion, Senator Clinton just did what everyone’s wanted her to do all along. Part of the reason for Barack Obama’s wide-ranging appeal, and that of John McCain on the GOP side, is that they almost always seem like human beings in public. I really don’t think this is simply because they’re afforded more luxury in the public eye as men. (Case in point, the late Ann Richards.)

By the way, to the men out there: If y’all are feeling left out of the moment, fear not: Chris Matthews may have set us back several generations, but Mitt Romney’s been out there carrying the torch for our own public humanity (as it seems to be defined these days.) Although, thus far — in Iowa and New Hampshire at least — he has not been greeted as a liberator.

Update: “No woman is illegal“? Oh, please. That doesn’t even make any sense.