Obama complains, trains, automobiles

PAOLI, Pa. -- Barack Obama today reiterated his case that only he could deliver a new politics, but he did so with all the trappings of the old politics: a whistlestop tour across Pennsylvania where he continued to argue that Wednesday's debate had trivialized serious issues in favor of "the latest distraction of the week."

"This election is our chance to declare independence -- to declare independence from politics as usual," Obama said at his first stop, in Wynnewood on Montgomery County's Main Line, returning to rhetorical theme he kicked off at a massive rally held in front of Philadelphia's Independence Hall on Friday night.

After a statewide bus tour last month, Obama's throwback day trip across eastern Pennsylvania -- by all accounts the first foray onto the rails by a candidate -- seemed designed less to present him as an everyman than a historical figure. Obama traveled on an antique rail car known as the Georgia 300 -- trailing a pair of engines and a series of Amtrak passenger cars -- complete with a back platform for waving to crowds that lined stations along the route.

Obama continued to liken his campaign to that waged by revolutionaries throwing off British control over 200 years ago, apparently uninterested in the possible metaphorical power of any of the local sights he was scheduled to pass on his train itinerary: a Lilly Pulitzer boutique in suburban Ardmore, the farmlands of Lancaster County's Amish County, and the Three Mile Island nuclear plant outside Harrisburg.

Before his morning departure from Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, Obama was welcomed onto the platform by Senator Bob Casey, who last starred as his colleague's buddy for bowling and hot dogs on their boys' road trip. This time, Casey appeared as a family man, joined by his wife and the three daughters whose enthusiasm for Obama helped goad Casey into making a surprise endorsement.

"Where you going?" Obama hollered to passengers waiting on an adjacent track. "New York? Tell everybody I said hi."

Then Obama blew the train's horn, twice -- "that is too much fun," he reported giddily -- and offered his take on the famous conductor's cry.

"Everybody get on board now!" he said.