Event gives Obama one-on-one time

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is capable of drawing crowds of thousands, but he says lately, he's taking a different tack.

"We've been focusing more on house parties and small group meetings so that I can interact more with people directly, I can hear their stories, their concerns," he said in an interview in Las Vegas on Friday.

"The rallies are terrific ... but what I miss is the one-on-one interaction where I hear directly from people about their concerns, or what their hopes and dreams are."

It was hot and awkward, but the Illinois senator did that in Las Vegas on Friday, speaking to a group of more than 100 people jammed into a private home on the western side of town, near Sahara Avenue and Rainbow Boulevard.

Obama spoke before people on folding chairs in the sweat-inducing living room, in front of a flat-screen television over a mantel that had been draped with red, white and blue bunting. Others were crowded into the foyer, dining room and back porch of Las Vegans Yvette and Damone Williams; the media were corralled in the kitchen.

Obama's stump speech nonetheless began with a reference to the giant rallies that launched his celebrity-tinged campaign. "Everywhere we go, we've been seeing these extraordinary crowds," he told the audience Friday. At his first appearance in Las Vegas in February, he drew about 3,500 people to the Clark County Government Center.

The line allows him to segue into the idea that the campaign isn't about him, but about a movement, "something stirring out there in the country today ... a hunger, almost desperate, for change."

That people-powered movement has led more than 250,000 people to donate to Obama's campaign, many of them small contributions. "We got $5 here and $10 there," he said. "We got ordinary people, and that's how change happens in America, from the bottom up, not from the top down," he said.

Obama's campaign has not, however, ignored the traditional campaign tactic of wooing influential local politicos. Earlier in the week the campaign announced a team that includes two prominent state legislators and Democratic operative Billy Vassiliadis; on Friday morning, Obama also picked up the support of Assemblyman Harvey Munford, D-Las Vegas.

Asked about his Nevada endorsements in the interview, Obama didn't mention any of them by name but lauded them as "a wonderful group of supporters" and "very diverse."

"We've been extremely successful in generating volunteers in Nevada ... but because I haven't spent as much time out here as I would have liked, at the political level we still need good advice and counsel, and this team will be able to help guide our progress," he said.

Obama was not yet in the Senate when it voted to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq and has trumpeted the fact that, unlike his top competitors for the Democratic nomination, he opposed the war from the start, as a 2002 candidate.

At the same time, his calls for withdrawing the military from Iraq are more cautious than some other candidates'; he likes to say that "we've got to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in," and has proposed a measure that would give combat troops a yearlong window for redeployment.

"If we get out carelessly, then our troops will be at greater risk, and Iraq could collapse in a way that could be dangerous. So we've got to think through our exit," Obama told Friday's audience.

Asked in the interview about a measure introduced in the Senate on Friday by two Republicans, Richard Lugar and John Warner, that would require Bush to outline a contingency plan for the war in Iraq by October, Obama cautioned that he had not yet seen the details of it.

"I have deep respect for Senators Warner and Lugar. They have been more honest than most of my Republican colleagues in recognizing that the strategy the president has pursued is not working," Obama said. "Understandably, they're cautious about forcing the hand of the leader of their party.

"Having said all that ... I am a firm believer that we have to put forward a firm timeline because this president has been so recalcitrant."

Las Vegan Lydia Edwards, a 48-year-old special education teacher, already had signed up to be a precinct captain for Obama's campaign when she came to Friday's event. After seeing him in person for the first time, she said he was everything she'd hoped.

"He represents a new generation of Americans," she said. "I haven't worked on anyone's political campaign since (George) McGovern when I was in junior high. But he makes me excited. I think he can win this, and I think he can do the job."