Meet the Most important person in the bar

After the debate I approached James Lileks

and Jonah Goldberg

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33716” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Jonah at the end of a long day”][/​caption]

ask­ing for inter­views, both declined as they were “talked out” but James and I had chat­ted dur­ing the breaks in the action and Jonah con­sented to the photo you see. One must remem­ber that while it was a fun event for many, this was work for them. Pleas­ant work per­haps but work.

Stacy, Mike from Gran­ite Grok and I, joined by a gen­tle­man named Peter who we were debat­ing the issues with, went to the Bar to have a bite and talk more.

To my sur­prise there was an inor­di­nate amount of press there from Dianne Sawyer to Howard Fine­man. You could not go 3 feet with­out trip­ping over some­one who the informed would recognize.

As I didn’t want to inter­rupt peo­ple eat­ing nor pho­to­graph them as they did so I left them be while the four of us talked about what we saw, how­ever a few peo­ple came over and we had an occa­sion to chat.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33717” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Pete, Stacy and Jake Tap­per”][/​caption]

Jake scolded me for not e-​mailing him as we dis­cussed but I’d been flat-​out and just didn’t have the time, the con­cept that I didn’t have time to e-​mail him is on reflec­tion an amaz­ing thing.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33718” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Mickey Kaue and Stacy ”][/​caption]

I had never had the plea­sure of meet­ing Mickey Kaus till tonight, he is a nice guy but the odd think I noticed was his busi­ness card, not because of any fancy design but the paper stock was the heav­i­est I ever felt on such a card. Odd the things you notice.

Pete mean­while man­aged to get pic­tures with Dianne Sawyer (It is quite aston­ish­ing how beau­ti­ful she is up close), and sev­eral other media stars from Mary Matalin to some of the NRO guys. Donna Brazile had only a sec­ond but came over and I snapped this shot:

You might ask why am I not in any pic­tures, I don’t really do posed pic­tures myself

Pete how­ever had a field day, if you fol­low this stuff this it was some­thing to behold so many peo­ple from so many promi­nent TV net­works and national pub­li­ca­tions and blogs.

But the title of this post is the most impor­tant per­son in the bar, I saved his pic­ture for last:

[cap­tion id=“attachment_33721” align=“aligncenter” width=“450” caption=“Meet Joseph the man who mat­ters the most”][/​caption]

Joseph has never been on TV, you will not find his byline in any national mag­a­zine or blog but he was the sin­gle most impor­tant per­son that I met. You see Joseph is a res­i­dent of NH and a voter who plans on vot­ing in the NH pri­mary and it is his deci­sion and thou­sands like him that all of the press in the room are depen­dent on for our stories.

I talked to two other such peo­ple who might have com­peted with Joseph for that honor but one was a demo­c­rat who will not be vot­ing Tues­day, and the other declined to com­ment. Joseph said he was unde­cided. I gave him my card and asked him if he could e-​mail me when he makes up his mind.

There were at least 50 jour­nal­ists in the room with Joseph, peo­ple who have honed their craft over decades, but to my knowl­edge he wasn’t asked that ques­tion by any­one else. Granted they were off the clock but in my mind that ques­tion is the rea­son for being there.

If I get that e-​mail from Joseph and he gives me per­mis­sion I’ll tell you what he decides and why, but never for­get there may have been a lot of cel­e­brates in that room, some of who make a con­sid­er­able amount of money, but on Tues­day next, none of them will mat­ter as much as he.

Update: Insta­lanche, got this up at 4:15 a.m. (not sched­uled writ­ten) woke up at 8 and then off to NH once debate is done, look­ing for­ward to morn­ing Joe Town Hall tonight, glad Pats have a bye.