DeLeon: Is a free poster too much

On a rainy Friday, the same day that it was reported that Barack Obama had raised an inconceivable $196 million dollars for his campaign, I stood next to a young woman offering herself as a volunteer at the reception desk at Obama’s Philadelphia headquarters on the fourth floor of a former bank building at 15th and Sansom streets in Center City. She asked for a poster to put in her front yard in Powelton Village. She was told that such a sign would cost $5. And she paid. “I felt guilty,” she said later, noting that when she worked as a volunteer for Chaka Fattah during his run for mayor no one charged her for campaign posters. She didn’t have to add that she also felt stupid and vaguely insulted. Five dollars for a campaign poster? This is change?

Earlier that same week, a middle-aged city employee and District Council 47 union activist used her lunch hour to stop by to ask for a sign to put in her South Philly rowhouse window. She was treated like a bag lady trying to get over on eBay. “You people come in here expecting free material,” said a shockingly unpleasant man. If I hadn’t witnessed the one incident, I wouldn’t have believed the other. But in a very short time Friday evening, I heard multiple and unforced stories about how creeped out people were by their experiences. “They looked at me like I was al-Qaida,” said one very non-Muslim-looking guy with an Irish surname who walked out of headquarters at the same time I did. Maybe Obama staffers thought he was a Hillary mole.

 So why would Obama campaign people act like surly sales clerks at The Gap? I could venture a guess or two, none of them kind and none of them a valid excuse. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they were hungry. So what? They’ll never have another opportunity to make a good first impression. And that’s bad politics. The last thing the Obama campaign needs is to appear uninterested in and disconnected from people in Pennsylvania, a state that doesn’t love you back, as well as one thickly populated by lifelong residents who never forget a slight. And if a free campaign poster is too much to ask for, what are the odds of getting universal health care?

Clark DeLeon is a Philadelphia writer. He can be found at clarkdeleon.com.