The Story Of The Great American Prairie Fire & A Brokedown Presidential Palace

I'm just back from a whirlwind three-day tour of four Middle Atlantic states that was part business but mostly pleasure, with some political snoopery thrown in for good measure. (I just can't help myself.)

Some observations based on an admittedly unscientific sampling:

* There were Barack Obama lawn signs, posters, t-shirts and buttons pretty much wherever I went from a small town in Delaware to Pennsylvania coal country to northern New Jersey suburbs to upstate New York, while I lost count of all of the cars with Obama bumper stickers. But I did not see one sign, button or anything else touting John McCain. Not one.

* Almost everyone with whom I spoke, who included a house painter in Delaware, a Pennsylvania parochial school nurse, a New Jersey limousine driver and a Russian woman in New York who had become an American citizen last year, said the same thing: This election is all about leadership.

That is actually pretty easy to miss if you are sucked into the daily sturm und drang of news media campaign coverage focused on personalities, controversies and scandals.

I spoke to 20 people who ranged from their early 20s to mid 80s. All but six said they planned to vote for Obama. Three others said they would vote for McCain and three did not plan to vote.

If this cross section is any indication of the electorate at large, and I think that it more or less is, I make these conclusions with some degree of confidence:

* There is a prairie fire burning in America fueled by a longing for leadership. Voters care less about when U.S. troops leave Iraq or how the economy gets fixed than electing someone who can lead while easing their fears about the future.

* Allowing for the fact that none of my stopovers were in deeply conservative areas, with this fire at his back Obama may well win in a landslide. This is because McCain, who is running a shockingly inept campaign, represents the third term of a president who has been an abjectly poor leader.

* * * * *

It is fitting that among the places I heard the leadership mantra was the home of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Hyde Park, 90 miles north of New York City.

There is a consensus among historians and people of a certain age that FDR not only exemplified the best in presidential leadership, he brought out the best in Americans during a time fraught with extraordinary crises not unlike today, while George Bush has not only not led, he has brought out the worst in us.

FDR's family home, presidential library, a visitor's center and sundry outbuildings are known as the Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site. The biggest draw is Springwood, a 35-room mansion where the great man battled polio and came home from Washington to rest during an unprecedented four terms in office bookended by the Great Depression and World War II.

Springwood, which FDR gave to the American people, is literally falling apart from a lack of funding. There is a broken down-ness to it -- just as there is a broken down-ness in the U.S. after seven-plus excruciating years of presidential lite -- that dishonors the memories of FDR and wife Eleanor, who are buried along with Fala, their beloved Scottish terrier, in a nearby rose garden. FDR directed the planting of 2,000 trees on the property in the depths of the Depression to encourage farmers to do the same in order to control erosion. Today some of the grandest trees are looming, leafless skeletons and many others are in dire need of care.

This state of affairs was shocking but somehow not surprising: A president who will waste a trillion dollars shedding American blood in Iraq but has not seen fit to check the decay of the home of a president whom he has had the temerity to compare himself to beyond a drop-in-the-bucket appropriation to stanch the worst of the mansion's problems.

* * * * *

One of the McCain supporters with whom I spoke was a tall and rail-thin 84-year-old Marine Corps veteran of the Guadalcanal and other World War II battles in the Pacific who has lived his entire life in a small town in Indiana. He had announced to his wife in a booming voice that he wasn't "going to pay no damned fee" when the park ranger leading our tour group asked to see admission tickets as we climbed the steps to the dilapidated entrance of Springwood. The ranger smiled and waved veteran and wife through.

As we stood on the back lawn of the house after the tour taking in the majesty of the Hudson River and not a few dead trees, this proud man volunteered the fact McCain also is a veteran -- as well as a former POW -- and that is all he needed to know to vote for him.

"But can he lead?" I inquired.

"Of course. The man's a veteran and a great patriot," he boomed. That settled it for him.

The Russian woman, who has lived in Brooklyn for 26 years and was escorting two cousins from Israel, said in a thick accent that she was excited about voting in her first U.S. election and that supporting Obama was "a no-brain-her."

I asked her why that was so.

"Because Americans are suffering. The man is a dictator," she said, referring to Bush. "Me, I'm lucky. I lost my job but my husband is doing okay."

What did she do?

"I was a home health-care worker, but the dictator took away our money although there are many old people who are sick and need us.

"He sent the money over there," she said with a sweep of her arm in what I presumed was the general direction of Iraq.

"I'm Russian, but I call Bush a dictator," she said with a laugh. "I know it's not right, but I can't help it . . . "

One of her cousins interjected that the woman has a son who is a medic in Iraq.

"Yes, yes," the woman acknowledged. "Baghdad. The Green Zone. Him I'm not worried about. He can take care of himself. The old people can't."

A gray haired woman from North Carolina wearing an Obama baseball cap, a bored teenaged grandson with a spike haircut in tow, joined the conversation.

She volunteered that she was barely old enough to remember when FDR died.

"It was the only time that I ever saw my mother cry," she said.

"When Obama wins," she added, touching the brim of her cap for emphasis, "It will be my turn to cry. But mine will be tears of joy."