Sen. Joe Biden offered a good example today of the difficulty of a national presidential campaign. Candidates are rushed from site to site (Biden left Columbia for St. Louis), often hitting more than one state per day. And while mostly sticking to their stump speeches, they try to recognize local politicians and sprinkle their speeches with local references.

Biden slipped a bit during the introductions, through no fault of his own. In introducing local elected officials, from Ninth District Congressional candidate Judy Baker to former Gov. Roger Wilson, Biden tried to give a special recognition to Sen. Chuck Graham of Columbia.

“Chuck, stand up, let the people see you,” Biden says. He was a bit chagrined when he realized that Graham uses a wheelchair. He recovered quickly and told the crowd to “stand up for Chuck.” The crowd responded with a standing cheer for Graham.

Other notes from Biden’s speech in Columbia:

*The prayer before the festivities was offered by Pastor John Baker of First Baptist Church in Columbia, and it was full of political themes. Baker prayed for health care for all and a sustainable environment. The locals weren’t shocked at the political nature of the prayer. Baker is the husband of Judy Baker, the state rep who is running for Congress.

*Judy Baker served as the first speaker to warm up the crowd and get them “fired up” for Biden. (The “fired up” cheer sort of fizzled, as did “yes we can”. After the organized cheers died down, a solitary voice echoed the feeling of the crowd with three words: “We want Joe.”) Baker clearly got the “change” memo, using change in most sentences, sometimes more than once.

*Boone County in play? An Obama field representative urged the crowd to get their friends registered to vote. She said the county voted for George Bush in the last presidential election by a margin of 158 votes over John Kerry.

*Biden made sure to mention the 6th-ranked Missouri Tigers football team, though he also asked that nobody make fun of his school’s mascot, the Delaware Blue Hens. He also made sure to mention the Chrysler plant layoffs in Fenton and the Anheuser-Busch takeover by InBev. The last reference was one to “anxiety” in the American populous, wondering what might happen next.

*It wouldn’t be a political visit in Columbia without somebody asking about “peace.” A woman in the crowd asked Biden if he’d have the courage to talk seriously about creating a “department of peace.” Biden dodged by discussing his support for the Institute of Peace, a Congressional funded institute based in Hawaii. The question about peace was rooted in a fear about growing violence in America, as well as foreign policy. Biden responded that the way to reduce violence in America is to better educate our children. In one of his strongest moments, he walked among the crowd talking about how too many young children show up at school with a vocabulary deficit. He talked about his wife, a teacher. And he turned it into a finger-pointing argument to better fund early childhood education. It took him awhile to get to that, but he worked the crowd well and built up enthusiasm from a question that was a bit off-center.