Federal Hall

A day after John McCain appeared at a town hall-style event that turned out to look a little like a campaign rally at New York's Federal Hall, the McCain campaign accepted another invitation for a joint debate with Barack Obama, this one extended by the Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson Libraries.

McCain's communications director, Jill Hazelbaker, used the invite as an opportunity to try and shame the Obama campaign ("American people deserve a great debate about the future of our country, and we hope that Barack Obama will join us for these important events at these historic venues"), and McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, sent the following letter to his Obama counterpart, David Plouffe:  read more »

Out on the campaign trail, town hall-style meetings are often held in barns, or factories or high school gyms. John McCain's "Town Hall Meeting in New York" on Thursday night took place under the vaunted marble dome and pillars of Federal Hall, where the audience mostly looked like they had wandered in directly from their Wall Street offices. Men wearing dark suits and long power ties and women, most of them blond, surrounded a wooden podium, next to a thigh-high speaker. In the quiet, show's-about-to-begin minutes before McCain arrived, Tony Carbonetti, the former chief political adviser to Rudy Giuliani and a good friend of McCain, twisted in his second row seat to chat with Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman behind him.  read more »