So, what’s with the X?

That’s what I was thinking also, when it was taped down recently before Sen. Joe Biden’s arrival at Fox High School in Arnold for his campaign appearance last Thursday. But before I had the chance to ask, a Biden handler told the photographers it would be good to stand near the X when Biden appeared from backstage because that was where he was going to stand and wave to the crowd.

Huh? The senator can’t just stop and wave from wherever he likes?

It’s indicative of the remarkable choreographed nature of campaign appearances during the election cycle, and not just by the Democrats. When Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin held a huge rally at T.R. Hughes Ballpark in O’Fallon in August, it was the same scene. Handlers briefed photographers on what they would see, where the candidates would stand, where they would walk, where the bus would pull in, etc.

And photographers by nature wanted to know the details. They want to put themselves in the best place to get the best images.

It wasn’t always like this.

Seems like a few years back (20 years I now realize after a Google search), that I spent a few days with former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis during his 1988 run against President George H.W. Bush. Dukakis was campaigning in New Hampshire and I first met him at his motel at the end of his day. Yes, it was a motel, with room doors that open to the parking lot.

Asking what he had planned for the evening and the next day, he said first he was going for a run and invited me along. It made for terrible pictures, using direct flash against the darkness, but the fact that he invited me along where we actually had conversation was remarkable in itself. It was the two of us, maybe two or three Secret Service officers and a car behind us. And heck, there may have even been a reporter or two.

Those were the days.

Those days are gone.