INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY -- Here's a rule of journalism I learned today: don't attempt to interview people about politics -- or anything, really -- in the capital of American motor racing in the weeks before the Indy 500, with some of the world's fastest vehicles doing practice laps, whining round the track every few seconds just yards away. It makes for some oddly punctuated conversations. "That's the problem with the gas tax and all these things they're promising," Ann Moore, a volunteer at the track, told me. "It's not the..." -- and here a racecar screeched past -- "...because it's only Congress that can..." -- another racecar -- "...with the oil companies." Got that? (I'm sure Tom Wolfe could have done something with it.)
Still, the acoustics didn't stop Hillary Clinton making a brief visit here a little earlier, where, in order to firm up her woman-of-the-people credentials, she appeared with Indiana native, racing driver and Clinton supporter Sara Fisher, and indulged in a little rhetoric with echoes of Tony Blair. More below...
"There's a good driving analogy," Clinton said. "If you want to move forward you put it in D. If you want to move back you put it in R." (Manual transmission drivers of Europe, please translate that in your heads.) Or to put it another way, and to quote the former British prime minister: "I've not got a reverse gear." Fisher hastily chipped in to point out that her car didn't have a reverse gear, either, which sort of ruined the metaphor. "That's right. Full speed ahead the whole time," said Clinton, recovering quickly. And then she sped away in her silver-grey SUV -- although "speeding" is a relative concept here at the track -- leaving behind her a few slightly bemused racing enthusiasts and track staff. (Now I'm sitting outside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall Of Fame, blogging amid crowds of Indy 500-crazed school groups.)
A few things are immediately clear from talking to Clinton supporters here (though they're in a minority by comparison with Republican sympathisers). The first is that nobody ever seems remotely impressed by these campaign photo-opportunities: Clinton's ostentatious demonstrations of blue-collar-ness, or of testicular fortitude, are waved away dismissively even among those who plan to vote for her, or who already did earlier this morning. But the second is that Clinton's economic messages -- her often vitriolic attacks on China and her gas tax holiday proposal, widely dismissed as gimmickry -- carry plenty of weight. "I feel like we could use any help we can get right now," said Stacy Gilbert, a mother of three, "and eventually you have to ask yourself who's going to give you that. Even if it's just a little. And I know suspending the gas tax isn't going to be much." (Or any, if the oil firms raise prices to compensate, as Obama predicts, or if people just buy more gas as a result.) "All this talk about changing the way politics works -- that's just what politicians always say."
