The Handshake

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The Handshake

By Denny McAuliffe | Video by Troy Foster


MISSOULA, Mont.—This is what it's like to shake hands with Sen. Barack Obama, especially after thinking you blew your chances of meeting and greeting the Democratic presidential candidate by showing up late for his speech.

Obama visited Missoula on Saturday, speaking to 8,000 people packed into the University of Montana's Adams Center basketball arena.

A few hundred yards away, in the cold bleachers of the Washington-Grizzly football stadium, sat 500 disappointed latecomers and people who didn't have tickets to the event. They were relegated to the overflow seating area and watched Obama's speech on a Jumbotron at one end of the football field.

One of the bummed-out outsiders was Melissa Morgan, a member of the Ely Shoshone tribe of Nevada and graduate of the American Indian Journalism Institute. Much to her surprise and delight, Morgan got to shake hands with Obama after the speech. The candidate showed up unexpectedly in the stadium and headed for the bleachers, suddenly the luckiest place in town.

Denny McAuliffe, Osage, is the project director and founder of reznet. He is a former assistant foreign editor at The Washington Post.