Trail Diary: What I Saw at the Multiplex in Kettering, Ohio

4:47 p.m. Kettering, Ohio. The staff has pulled the campaign van into the parking lot of a multiplex because someone needed a bathroom and someone else wanted popcorn, and I was told we had twelve minutes. The lot is enormous in the way that only cinema parking lots and certain fields are — too flat, too grey, with pigeons walking it like they own the proceedings. I have thoughts about the pigeons. I am keeping them to myself. A campaign is not the place for every thought.

There are two older women near the entrance, sitting on a bench eating popcorn out of a bag they have brought from home. They are talking about a film. One of them says she would not have come at all except that she needed somewhere to go, somewhere quiet that had other people in it at the same time. The other one nods. She says the same thing. Neither of them is talking about the film anymore. They are talking about the particular loneliness of a Wednesday, and the multiplex is their answer to it. I make a note. The staff tells me I do not have a notebook. I make the note anyway.

The outrage this week — and there is always outrage, I have noticed that about this part of democracy — is about my policy of allowing dogs into theaters. I am ruining cinema, they say. The experience. The sanctity. I want to be careful here because I have a great deal of respect for cinema, which is a room full of strangers agreeing to feel the same thing for two hours. I find this remarkable. I have been doing it to rooms for years, and I did not have a building.

What I saw today, in a parking lot in Kettering at 4:47 p.m., is not a policy argument. It is just two women who came to a building because they did not want to be alone on a Wednesday, and the building let them in. What I am proposing is that a dog in the row beside you is a version of the same thing. A warm weight. A reason to share your armrest with someone who does not mind. The staff says this is not a rebuttal. I say it is the only rebuttal.

Consistent with my position on the Department of Companionship: any theater that registers as a dog-permitting venue receives a dedicated row — Row D, obviously — with seating approved by my office and a fourteen-day acclimatization inspection period. The inspectors will be thorough. They will also be delighted. I cannot apologize for that.

It is 5:03 p.m. Someone is at the van already. The popcorn situation has been resolved. The women are still on the bench. I do not think they have noticed me, which is fine. The best campaign moments are the ones that do not know they are happening.