Quick Takes On The D.C. Protest
My pal Matt Welch, editor-in-chief of reason, bopped on down to the Mall (the national one, not the shopping one) to see what was what. An excerpt from his observations:

* Of the people I ended up talking to, the general vibe was that they were conservative, and then either Republican, formerly Republican, or independent. Every single one had unkind words to say about George W. Bush's spending and governing record, though none had protested him. None expressed trust in Republicans, and most preferred a "throw-all-the-bums-out" strategy. All but one did not care about Obama's birth certificate controversy, and those I asked thought it was foolish to bring guns to political gatherings.

* People had traveled from North Carolina, Alabama, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and Washington state.

* The view on Obama and his administration ranged from a "heading in the wrong direction" vibe to a "we're not gonna take it much longer" edge.

This is all, obviously, a partial and unscientific take, and not an attempt to encapsulate a huge event, but rather a faithful rendering of what I saw. With that caveat, I had a very hard time reconciling the human beings I talked to and observed with the caricatures described in pre-writes by the New York Times' Gail Collins ("The tea party movement activists range from geeky Ron Paulists who obsess about the money supply to conspiracy theorists who believe that Barack Obama is a noncitizen brought here by people who hate this country"), the L.A. Times' Tim Rutten ("the talk-show/tea-party right...if it has its way-will convert the GOP into an almost exclusively white, zealously religious, mostly Southern party"), and Gawker's Alex Pareene ("Glenn Beck is an actual terrorist, and the people attending his rally in DC tomorrow are al-Qaeda in America").

Like Matt, I think it's significant that, eight months into the Obama nation, there's such a huge groundswell of protest.