The Democrat Convention

Posted belatedly is this report on the Democrat Convention from Peter Orne: "A friend who is a manager at the Park Plaza Hotel & Towers complained to me that the Sheraton is getting all the celebrities for the Democratic National Convention, including Michael Moore and Leonardo DiCaprio. When Leonardo checked in, young women swarmed around him, and the hotel staff had to pull him behind the front desk and secrete im to his room through a back route. Twenty minutes later, Leo returned, blithely talking on his cell phone as though nothing had happened, and causing
much brow sweating among the staff.

My friend did a 3:00 to 11:00 shift at the Plaza and was stuck caring for delegates from New York and Delaware as well as many national campaign staff. "They all think they are John Kerry," she says. "They want this and that, and I tell them they have to stay in the same room for the whole week." Having seen both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush dawdle in her lobby over the past year, she says the higher-up guys are a lot nicer and friendlier. "It's the smaller guys that are the worst, and there are a lot of them."

I was quite surprised when she told me that John Edwards actually gets the top-floor presidential suite at the Plaza. Edwards and his family will be staying there for the week. Kerry, of course, owns his own penthouse on Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill, and he ust paid back the $6.4-million mortgage he made on it last fall when his presidential hopes were dwindling.  So it's Edwards who'll be doing most of the dawdling at the Plaza. And we'll see what sort of Southern hospitality Edwards can bring to a town better known for hospitals"