What’s your guess as to what the official crowd estimate will be in Berlin?
Here again is how the candidate was managing expectations in his back and forth with reporters aboard his plane this morning:
BO: I did not realize, my staff basically just told me, that this space is bigger than I realized, so –
Q. Is that a good or bad thing?
BO. That’s a potentially bad thing (laughs) if nobody shows up. We’re sort of on the high wire out there. I was like, I’m sorry, how many does that accommodate?
Q. So you’re going to be out scouring up a crowd this afternoon,
A Well that’s true- that might be –
Q. Go around and hand out those fliers?
A. Why don’t you guys go around and distribute some fliers. Does that present a conflict for you guys?. Not really!.
Q Tell the McCain campaign.
A Yeah. So, but – uh, no, I mean this is one of those where we really have no idea what’s going to happen. It’s sort of a crap shoot. I’m happy with the speech though.
UPDATE: I’m at the site, where the speech is to begin in a little over half an hour. I have no clue how many people are here, but it is a picture-perfect summer evening, breezy and bathed in diaphanous (I’ve always loved that word) light.
UPDATE2: Berlin police are not always accurate, but I think they are the closest thing we have to an official estimate. They are saying the crowd was “over 200,000.” Midway through the speech, I went up in a cherry-picker, and saw crowd stretching back toward the Brandenburg Gate, though trees obscured whether it actually went all the way. Anyway, if the real number is in fact in the vicinity of 200,000, our winner would appear to be commenter Lulu Lulu. (Then again, they may just have been counting the network anchors…)
The prize: Bragging rights.
