The 2004 US presidential election was hard-fought. Due to some interesting quirks in the way elections in this country are conducted, combined with the distribution of political thought, Florida was a “battleground” state that was undecided until the end. In particular, central Florida—where Orlando is, and I live—was right on the front lines of both campaigns. John Kerry arrived the Friday before election day, and George W. Bush was here the day after that.
One might presume from the fact that I have photos of the Bush rally that I’m a Bush fan. It is true that my political leanings are mostly conservative, and that I like Bush personally. But politics are seldom that simple. Had I been eligible to vote I’m not sure I would have selected Bush. Of course it doesn’t matter, since (a) I can’t vote in the US, because I’m not a citizen, and (b) the election is over anyway. That’s part of the reason these photos are posted so long after the event.
News reports indicate that 17,000 people were at Tinker Field in Orlando to cheer on the President. (That’s the primary reason I was there—it was the President of the United States.) We arrived five hours before the President did, which allowed us to get prime seating at the very top of the stands, which cleared out most of the heads of the crowd and yet was still close enough for my moderate telephoto lens to be useful.
I managed to take over 150 photos, but I’ve culled them to a more manageable set. Some of them have commentary on the full-size images.
On the whole it was a very interesting night, if for no other reason than to see a bit of American politics in action. This was not a crowd of undecided voters weighing the President’s stand on various issues; this was a pep rally, a rah-rah crowd and an interesting exercise in groupthink. No doubt the Kerry rally the previous day was exactly the same.
