Gotta read more carefully

When a client sent me a two-line email asking me to shoot a campaign event last week with Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, I marked on my calendar what I thought would be a peaceful hour or two with a few dozen people and a popular candidate.

But when I arrived at Bowie State University for the event, I found traffic jams, people parking on the highway and huge security lines. Uh oh, I thought, this doesn't look good.

If I'd only read the email a little more closely, I would have realized that this particular campaign stop involved President Obama showing up to endorse the governor. To read the newspapers these days, you'd think that an Obama event would only attract a few party loyalists and some disgruntled Tea Partyers. That's apparently not the case, at least in that part of Maryland. Thousands of people waited a long time in those lines to see and hear — and cheer — the president.