July 26, 2004, 11:27 a.m.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Conservatives are another country to the Dems.

Boston, Mass — ABC's Ted Koppel, Michael Weiskopf of Time magazine, Sen. Max Baucus: These were just some of the political celebrities on my plane from Washington to Boston last night. I refused to say hello to any of them, less out of principle than the fact I had nothing to say and didn't know them.

Anyway, I'm here in the breakfast room in The Ramada Inn (the "finest Ramada Inn fifteen minutes from the subway!"). You can tell that the Democratic National Committee values National Review's opinion, as most of the people down here with me are from Japanese, German, and Latin American news outlets. Ah, yes — conservatives are another country to the Dems.

After checking in with the gang last night, I took the shuttle bus to the subway. You see, The Ramada Inn is a shuttle bus and two subways away from everything. If I were possessed by a demon and the exorcist exhorted the succubus to leave my body and hie itself back to the Stygian depths of hell, the poor imp would still have to take a shuttle bus and two subways to get there.

Anyway, on the ride to the subway station, I chatted up the shuttle driver, a very nice retired Boston cop. After talking about his sons and whatnot, I asked him what he thought of John Kerry. "Not much," came the reply. "That's what I like to hear!" your unbiased reporter responded.

The retired cop's chief complaint was that Ms. Heinz dropped the charges against an armed robber who mugged her and another woman (Mrs. Tim Wirth) in Washington in 1995. "You don't catch and release" to let them rob somebody else, he explained. I looked up the story this morning and it's not clear Heinz declined to press charges so much as she couldn't identify the suspect. Too bad: I thought I had stumbled on a great Kerry's-soft-on-crime story.

The subway was thick with the DNC rabble. One lady had a button that read: "I do not consent to a search." Another fellow had some book, which he ostentatiously held so that people on the train could read a giant blurb that said something to the effect of, "I am not a radical, I merely want to destroy the capitalist system." Fortunately, I was carrying a copy of Ghosts on the Roof — a collection of writings by Whittaker Chambers. The scruffian (my new word) had been smirking when he spotted my book. He stopped smirking. I felt like Moses after his staff-turned-snake ate the snakes conjured by the Egyptian priests.

Anyway, I met one of my best friends. He's a lobbyist, but I won't blow his cover. I met him at the bar of the Eliot Hotel, where he's staying. The Eliot is a very nice hotel. It seems the Democrats like lobbyists a lot more than they like National Review. Alas, this is probably true of the Republicans as well. We had some drinks. My friend showed me on the Boston map where we were. He then showed me where The Ramada Inn would be if the map were as big as a king-size fitted sheet.

Because my friend is a lobbyist, he was invited to the Blue Dog Democrats' big party at the Roxy. I tried to keep my head down as I didn't want to blow my friend's bipartisan rep. The Neville Brothers were playing. They were very loud. In order to fit in, I felt it was necessary to look like I was enjoying myself. So as a Democrat-in-mufti I drank several beers (before I stopped counting how many beers I had) and ate quite a large amount of shrimp. The chocolate brownies were especially good. Every now and then I said something along the lines of, "This shrimp is very good. Thank goodness the Democrats have fought for a Health-Care Bill of Rights. Because of them I can eat this shrimp without fear of choking and ending up in the hospital with medical bills I cannot afford."