DATELINE: Mobile, Alabama

“When voters want a national Daddy, someone to be tough and strong and defend the country, they vote Republican. When they want a Mommy to give them jobs, healthcare… they vote Democrat.” - The West Wing, Series 7 Episode 2, ‘The Mommy Problem’

John McCain is counting pretty damn hard on the American people looking for a Daddy right now. With five days until the crucial Florida primary, the Republican front-runner is leading on his (horrifying, awe-inspiring) war record, and people are responding to it: to the point that none of his supporters we’ve met have seemed remotely interested in anything but national security. One woman at a Q&A had to virtually apologise for asking about something as irrelevant as the economy, and even then she was brushed off with a cursory answer that McCain is “a fiscal conservative”. Detailed stuff right there.

We went to two John McCain events in less than 24 hours in Tallahassee, Florida (the state capital, where the scandal of 2000 went down). One event was due to be addressed by his wife Cindy, the other by Senator McCain himself; both of them bailed at the last minute – making it a whopping four times we have been stood up by the McCains in the space of two weeks. We’re starting to wonder if he really wants the potentially decisive My Fellow Americans endorsement or not.

The ’surrogate’ speakers at each event encapsulated the McCain message though – first his friend, and fellow veteran, Senator Warner from Virginia, and then today, an entire ‘Veterans’ Bus Tour For McCain’, featuring servicemen (and POWs) of all ages from all manner of conflicts, each lauding McCain’s strength of character and leadership.

All of the talk has been about the nobility of service. Today’s event was in an aircraft hangar, the stage flanked by a Navy helicopter. Most of the crowd were either military, former military, related to military, or in awe of the military. These people weren’t looking to vote for a President per se; they want a Commander in Chief.

“We carry our service with us for the rest of our lives, and do so with solemnity” Sen. Warner says, and he’s right. Beforehand I approached a lone Vietnam vet, a man of 60 with glasses and a round, pudding-bowl face. I don’t know if it’s my notebook, my stubble, my accent, or none of the above, but the response is not warm. He doesn’t smile, but stares me straight in the eye, unflinching:

“Why am I for Senator McCain? Because I believe any man who can spend six years in a box, and come out with his mind intact, with his common sense still intact, has got my vote. We need strong leadership right now. It’s a dark time in world history, a critical time.”

He drops his fixed, bespectacled gaze and moves away. The day before, in The Urbane Restaurant across town (a bistro with the haughtiest slogan imaginable: ‘Refined. Sophisticated. Gracious.’) Nina, a student originally from Miami, tells me how hard it is organising events as a Republican on campus, putting up with disruptions from the student body’s liberal majority. But she doesn’t care about her peers; she was so sure McCain was the man to lead America on the national security issues facing America she filed her vote for him weeks ago.

“I have never seen a more threatening set of circumstances than those that will face our next President,” Senator Warner had said to the crowd of wet, wealthy Floridians, dangling umbrellas and jewellery from every limb. If the only people who voted in elections were golf club WASPs, veterans, and people paranoid that the world was about to end, then Sen. McCain would get 100% without ever breaking a sweat. Or turning up to an event.

DATELINE: Tallahassee, Florida

In our unstinting quest to unearth at least one Republican during this trip, we made south from beautiful, ghostly Savannah, Georgia, hoping to see John McCain speak on Monday afternoon in Jacksonville, Florida (Florida’s hugely important primary is on 29 January). The dour, flyover-scarred city is the largest in the United States, and indeed it provided us with a record-breaking 841 square miles of disappointment. Monday happened to be Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US, which did not, alas, lead to massive debates, parties, speeches and community activities filling the streets of Jacksonville. To compound our boredom, it emerged that Senator McCain wanted $1,000 a head for his dinner event, which at the current exchange rate would have been about £30 each – and thus just slightly out of our price range. Sorry John.

Instead, we tripped further down the Florida coast to St Augustine, the oldest continuous European settlement in the USA; since it was settled by the Spanish in 1565, in fact. The town is heavily tilted towards tourists these days, giving the narrow Mediterranean-style streets and sixteenth century monuments a slightly tacky feel in places. It also felt like the kind of town where politics is heavily buried under a blanket of commerce. It’s like Disneyworld with Spanish history as the main attraction, rather than giant oversized rodents; so it’s like my Disneyworld, in fact. And man oh man was it gorgeous.

When those intrepid Spaniards settled the swampy riverside near the east coast of what is now Florida, they established the Mission of Nombre De Dios, and a 208ft stainless steel cross now stands in the place where their first mass in the new world was held. Today, swathed in sea breezes, surrounded by palms and picture-postcard little streets, the mission can’t help but evoke quiet contemplation, for atheists and theists alike; the settlers left something pretty special behind. Those early American Christians have bequeathed a diffuse, diverse series of messages since establishing the Mission in 1565; messages which continue to influence and underscore politics and elections in a manner absent from Britain since at least the nineteenth century.

One such permutation was a DJ on a local Jacksonville station who was spending MLK Day not celebrating the great man’s contribution to such Christian notions as harmony or unity, but interviewing a former abortion doctor. This doctor recounted the “cold-blooded, matter-of-fact” manner in which he had, in the 60s, 70s and 80s carried out abortion after abortion, before his secular Jewish upbringing (relevant how, I wondered?) gave way to an all-consuming awakening to the Catholic faith, and his current crusade to denounce his former profession. The DJ did not censure the sins of one so penitent, but ummed and ahhed at the description of the “matter-of-fact” approach of “the abortion movement”, and of abortion doctors like himself:

“Well that’s right, it was the same with the Nazis of course: they just got desensitized to all the killing they were part of.”

The former doctor and converted Jew did not demur, and, as any good Christian should, took this equivalency with a concentration camp guard like a man.

Meanwhile, across the dial, a DJ reflecting on Dr King’s legacy was preaching in full-flow:

“We’re saying, something must be wrong with capitalism. We’re saying, the profit motive must be taken out of the slums. We’re saying, what we need… is democratic socialism. Get some.”

She hit the last two words hard, before, unflinching at the inevitable bathos that was to come, she cut to the commercials.

In that night’s Democratic debate on CNN, beyond all the headline-grabbing bickering and tangled webs of ‘he said/she said’, there was a more revelatory segment, right at the end. The three candidates were asked for a 30 second explanation of why Dr King would have endorsed their candidacies, had he been alive today. You’ll have to trust my paraphrasing here, but I think each summarised answer encapsulates the candidate’s pitch:

John Edwards: “because Dr King’s passions were twofold: ending poverty, and fighting for equality – and I can deliver on those issues” (I’m a man of, and for, the people)

Barack Obama: “because change does not happen from the top down, it happens from the bottom up” (I’m building a movement here, take a chance on me)

Hillary Clinton: “because we are strongest when we lead by our values” (I’m a bureaucrat, I talk like a bureaucrat, and deep down you know you need a bureaucrat)

DATELINE: Greenville, South Carolina

INT. Early evening on the day of the South Carolina Republican Primary. A virtually empty bar on Greenville’s wealthy Main Street.

Tom, an indie-looking guy with a Rider of Rohan hood and an English accent, gestures to a TV in the corner of the bar.

Tom: “Excuse me. Are you going to be screening the Primary results when they start coming in later?”

Barmaid 1: “The what?”

Tom: “The South Carolina Primaries. The, erm, Republican Presidential Primaries.”

Tom stares hopefully at the barmaid. The barmaid stares blankly at him. Another barmaid calls across in a vain attempt to mediate this cul-de-sac of a dialogue.

Barmaid 2: “Is that that fight thing?”

Tom: “Um. No. The. Erm. Election. The Presidential Primary Election.”

Barmaid 1: “Oh. What’s that?”

The two smartly-dressed barmaids, both in their mid-20s, were not mentally challenged; to the naked eye, anyway. Yet we are supposedly now in the Republican heartlands. The evangelical heartlands. Mike Huckabee’s heartlands. The hot, dusty, conservative south, where your traditional 18th birthday present is a rifle, a Bible, and a Confederate flag for the back of your truck.

But there’s a New South, apparently; cosmopolitan, tolerant, and keen to shake off the caricatured clichés listed above. Because in Greenville, an upstate town of 60,000 people with a very pleasant, pretty Main Street and some luscious cultivated parklands, we have been surprised, surprised, and surprised again. There’s a statue to Robert E Lee across the road from our hotel, but otherwise it’s like a Bizzaro World version of the south. It’s snowing outside, the live band playing the Friday night set are a white reggae band, and the Republicans are nowhere to be seen on their big day.

As we journeyed down the eastern seaboard we kept apologising to ourselves and others for focusing so fixedly on the Democrats on this blog; the problem was that we just kept accidentally meeting Democrats (supporters and candidates alike), staying in largely Democratic towns, and so on. “Oh don’t you worry, South Carolina will see to that!” our friends kept saying, a glint in their eye.

Where on earth, then, are Greenville’s Republicans? It’s Primary day, and Tom and I walked a five mile tetrahedron around the town centre, through empty parking lots, rain-sodden parks and shopping streets, stopping off in a number of thronging cafes and restaurants along the way. Nowhere did we see a single Republican badge, bumper-sticker, or window-sign.

Approaching desperation, I called the Greenville County Republican Party, and was surprised to find my call answered by Samuel Harms, the local party Chairman. Even he was leaving Greenville, on his way to Columbia to see Mike Huckabee, the man for whom Greenville County is ‘the evangelical heartlands’, his natural home (Huckabee just came second to McCain, by the way).

According to the man on CNN 50% of South Carolina’s Republicans are evangelicals – how he knows this I have no idea. Is ‘evangelical’ a binary belief system? Furthermore, is it one that you must register ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to at the Town Hall? Either way, I know what the word ‘evangelical’ means when removed from its Christian context, and not once in 24 hours did I see anyone try and convince anyone else of anything political in Greenville. Actually, I tell a lie. There was one small group of young people wearing candidate stickers, debating with a middle aged man wearing a pin-badge in an office on Main Street. The stickers said ‘Edwards 08′. The pin-badge said ‘Obama’.

‘Nation to hear state voters’ voice today’ said the Saturday edition of The Greenville News. Well, the state’s Republican voters were speaking loud and clear in Greenville. They declaimed with one, resounding voice when they said “it’s cold out, so we’re staying home and watching a Steve Martin movie”.

DATELINE: Charlotte, North Carolina

Uni does not vote, has never voted, and has no intention to start voting in the future. He doesn’t trust any of the candidates. He likes Obama the best, but does not trust him either.

Uni is smart, charismatic, and knows everything that there has ever been to know about movies. He is also a vampire; a black vampire at that. His teeth are permanently re-modelled to have two fangs attached. “It was this game that made me want to start biting things in the first place”, he says when a friend puts Pacman on the X-Box 360. His house – which slightly worryingly does not exist, according to our GPS system – is a frazzled, smoky den full of frazzled, smoky people. He and his friend Alan both work at the movie theatre, and their tardis of knives, movie posters and video games is actually a very friendly place.

Uni and Alan may have no interest in the Presidential Primaries, but they have thought through the contingencies for surviving the coming zombie apocalypse. This is no idle back-of-an-envelope plan either. It involves running baths to store up water (for when the zombies cut off the supply, I assume?), and then a careful dispensation of the particular butterfly knives and machetes that adorn Uni’s walls, ready for combat.

The only time a political conversation comes up in the four or so hours we’re hanging out, it is prompted by Microsoft’s slightly unnerving use of their own ‘currency’, in the form of the tokens that are used to buy online games for the X-Box:

“I’m just waiting for the government to come out and openly admit they are essentially a corporation as well, with a profit motive and all. If the government just said ‘hey, the United States is now just a very large company’ I’d have at least some respect for them.”

DATELINE: Baltimore, MD

We’re trying not to devote too much time to sight-seeing on this trip; there’s simply too much else to do. But 24 hours in Baltimore provided an unmissable opportunity to visit Washington DC, only an hour away by train.

The highlight was not the remote, heavily guarded White House though, but the Lincoln Memorial. There he sits in his gigantic chair, pondering the great divides, injustices and challenges of American history, looming over the capital like some kind of BFG of democratic politics; a patriarch in the best possible way.

“Man.” Rachael’s friend Leah said softly, and sadly, as we stood between the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s right arm. “This is just really depressing. We used to have some really great Presidents. You know, instead of just a cartoon.”

As we’d discovered in the historic cities of Philadelphia and Boston, there are some very high ideals, lofty speeches, and great men who have set the tone for leadership in the United States. (Whereas in the UK we sort of drift airily along without ever sitting down at a big table to formally codify our liberty.) The standards are clearly there: but, I ask Leah, can any of the current candidates restore the Presidency to the grand status that monuments, history books, and civics classes bestow upon it?

“I doubt it.. I very much doubt it.” she laments. She’ll probably vote for Obama, but like a number of young people we’ve met in the cities of the eastern seaboard, that’s just sort of the default choice, it’s not because they’re fired up (ready to go), like some of the student Obamaniacs we’ve met in the more intense parts of the campaign trail.

Solemnity pock-marked the mood of our whole afternoon walking around the monuments of Washington D.C.; many of them, in fact, are war memorials. The three naïve young men in the Vietnam statue, simultaneously headstrong and yet scared of something they cannot see, particularly captured our attention. It’s such an effecting piece, and so humble, in its size and its location, tucked away from the main Vietnam Memorial and surrounded by a few skeletal bushes. All those Wilfred Owen-inspired notions that never again should rich men send their poor cousins to die in a needless war began encircling my head like vultures.

The relatively new World War Two memorial was also incredibly moving. We silently walked around the stately stone testaments to each individual state’s war dead, which sit in a large oval; federalized grief brought together in the monument’s centre by the gentle swoosh of fountains.

I know I said I would try not to opine on American politics in this blog, and will continue to stick to that for the most part. But I can only say that as we exited the memorial, seeing the legend ‘This monument was dedicated on 29 May 2004 by President George W. Bush’, and realising that that stone inscription would always be there, forever, next to a monument that honours so much noble, brave suffering and sacrifice, altered my mood once again. Never mind reflective. I just felt sick.