“We stand on tiptoe looking for a brighter age.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democrats and Republicans alike gathered in Greater Kansas City on Saturday and Monday to show their support for the candidate they hope will be the next President of the United States.

Many stood on tiptoe or hoisted children onto their shoulders, for the chance to either see Sen. Barack Obama Saturday on the grounds of the Liberty Memorial WWI Museum in Kansas City, Mo., or Sen. John McCain Monday on a football field at the Heartland High School and Academy in the nearby Kansas City suburb of Belton, Mo.

Obama spoke to an ethnically diverse crowd, estimated at about 75,000, on a sunny afternoon, while McCain addressed an almost exclusively white crowd, estimated at about 6,000, on an afternoon with skies threatening rain. Each pursued campaign strategies designed to reach core voters: Obama, largely urban but also suburban; McCain, rural, suburban and small town America.

Obama volunteers flashed blue political signs touting “Obama/Biden” and the crowd chanted, “Yes, We Can!” McCain volunteers waved both red and blue pom-poms and the crowd chanted “John McCain” and “Straight Talk.” Obama’s theme song was the soulful Stevie Wonder hit, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours,” while McCain’s “fight song” was from the 1980s film about an underdog boxer, “Rocky.”

Both Obama and McCain promised if elected, they would proceed in a “new direction” than the current presidential administration. And each vowed to work hard to restore the battered American Dream.

“It will take a new direction. It will take new leadership in Washington,” Obama said. “It will take a real change in the policies and politics of the last eight years.”

“We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight; hoping for our luck to change at home and abroad,” McCain said. “We have to act. We need a new direction and we have to fight for it.”

A recent surge in the polls for Obama has many Democrats hopeful that a change in party politics in Washington, D.C., will become reality. But Obama warned audience members to be cautious.

“But we can’t get overconfident. We can’t be cocky,” he said. “This election is too important to take anything for granted.”

McCain decided on a different approach. Upon strong urging from the crowd, he changed his language from “If I’m elected President” to “When I’m elected to President.” This switch was met with wild applause.

Both candidates talked about the primary hot-button issues: taxes, housing foreclosures, health care, Social Security, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The topic of the economy, however, took precedence for both candidates.

“It comes down to values – in America, do we simply value wealth or do we value the work that creates it?” Obama said. “For eight years, we’ve seen what happens when we put the extremely wealthy and well-connected ahead of working people. Now, John McCain thinks that the way to rebuild this economy is to double down on George Bush’s policy of giving more and more tax breaks to those at the very top in the false hope that it will trickle down.”

Obama said his tax plan will help rebuild the middle class.

“Under my plan, if you make less than $250,000 a year, which includes 98 percent of small business owners, you won’t see your taxes increase one single dime. Not your payroll taxes, not your income taxes, not your capital gain taxes, nothing. It’s time to give the middle class a break and that’s what I’ll do as President of the United States.”

Deborah Allen, from Kansas City, Kan., and a school teacher with the Kansas City, Missouri School District, attended the Obama rally. She said she believes “Obama embodies the American Dream.”

“With today’s economics, we are basically burning the economic candle at both ends,” she said. “On one side, we have Wall Street and things collapsing; on the other side, we can’t pay those mortgages because those jobs have been sent overseas. And so we find ourselves in a place where we’re going to have to have a change.”

McCain invoked the name of Joe the Plumber, the Ohioan who recently informed Obama that if he purchased the small business he works for, Obama’s tax plan would not benefit him. (However, Joe Wurzelbacher later conceded that Obama's tax plan would benefit him if he continued to earn his current salary.)

“Joe’s dream is to own a small business that will create jobs and the attacks on him are an attack on small businesses all over the country,” McCain said. “Whether it’s Joe the Plumber or Ed the Dairyman, small businesses employ 84 percent of Americans. We need to support small businesses, not tax them.”

McCain said Obama told Joe that he wants to “spread the wealth.”

“(Obama) believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans. In other words, Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway. America has an alternative to the phony tax cut my opponent started talking about only months ago. The McCain-Palin tax cut is the real thing. We're going to double the child deduction for every family. We will cut the capital gains tax. And we will cut business taxes to help create jobs, and keep American businesses in America.”

Michelle Stacy, Belton, said one of the reasons she supports McCain is because she and her husband would have to pay more taxes under Obama’s plan. The couple owns a small building company.

“As small business owners, (McCain’s) tax plan would help our business more,” she said. “But it’s a very bad time for builders right now.”

McCain said his first priority as president, would be to address home foreclosures, using some of the money from the $700-billion government bail-out to do so.

“I have a plan to protect the value of your home and get it rising again by buying up bad mortgages and refinancing them so if your neighbor defaults he doesn't bring down the value of your house with him,” he said.

Obama also said he will work to provide relief to homeowners in danger of foreclosure.

“We don’t need a new law or a new $300-billion giveaway to banks like Sen. McCain has proposed. We just need to act quickly and decisively. For those responsible homeowners in danger of losing their homes, I’ve proposed a three-month moratorium on foreclosures so that we can give people the breathing room they need to get back on their feet.”

Obama also pledged to begin the process of bringing the Iraq war to a close, while McCain said he would “bring our troops home with victory and honor.” McCain’s comment elicited chants from the crowd of “USA!”

Cherie Sabbato, Belton, who attended the McCain rally, said her son is a Black Hawk pilot in the U.S. Army.

“I don’t like McCain saying we’ll be (in Iraq) another 100 years,” she said. “But after talking with my son and his friends, I know we also just can’t pull out just like that. There has to be some rhyme and reason to it.”

Andy Shaffer, Raymore, Mo., said he was voting for Obama because he wants a president who will begin the process of sending troops home.

“I want a candidate in office who is actually thinking about getting out of Iraq; who has thoughts about it, plans about it. Thinking about it in the very least. I’m tired of our young men and women going over there for the wrong reasons, in my opinion,” he said.

Voters attending the rallies also expressed other concerns.

George Penniston, Independence, Mo., attended the McCain rally wearing a red McCain T-shirt and a vest and cap boasting numerous Democratic campaign buttons, including some for Harry S. Truman.

Penniston said he was a Democrat voting the Republican ticket in this election because he is concerned about concentration of power if the country has both a Democratic congress and a Democratic president.

“With a Democratic Congress, you need to have someone who can control it,” he said. “Otherwise all you have is a ‘yes man.’”

This will be the first time Paul Brandenburg, 18, of Blue Springs, Mo., will be old enough to vote in a presidential election. He attended the Obama rally. Brandenburg also has volunteered to be an election judge in Jackson County and will work the polls inside the Community of Christ Church in Independence.

Brandenburg said McCain represents another generation and not the 21st Century, as he believes Obama does.

”I’m very liberal. I’m pro-choice, I’m for gay rights. Everything about Obama is what I would want in a presidential candidate,” he said.

Whether swing state Missouri will go red or blue in this presidential election will be decided upon in a mere two weeks. Yard signs in Belton serve as a microcosm of the state’s historic Democratic/Republican tug-of-war:

On the corner of the Heartland High School and Academy property, a sign reads, “McCain/Palin.” Across the street in someone’s yard, a parked red tractor connected to a bed loaded with bales of hay, has a sign attached to it that reads, “Obama/Biden.”