Meanwhile, out in the cold, each candidate leads a procession into the debating hall. I’m with John Kerry, so I follow him in. (There’s a fair amount of gallows humor when you mention to other reporters that you’re following John Kerry, all of it with the implicit question: “Why?”) It is a surprisingly large crowd, augmented by the firefighters who have endorsed Kerry here, and a troupe—whatever the right word is—of bagpipers. The Kerry supporters march in a long line after him, chanting, and carrying five- or six-foot-tall Kerry signs. The candidate is constantly illuminated by TV cameras at the front of the march, looking, as usual, quite impressive. When they write Kerry’s epithet for this campaign, it will say, “He looked great.”