I apologize that it has taken me several days to post these … I’ve been buried in a book and laundry. Here are some concluding thoughts on the Democratic convention, particularly Thursday evening.
I tuned in Thursday evening just as the tribute to MLK was underway. Others have addressed elsewhere the Democratic Party’s historical stance on these issues. I made dinner during Tim Kaine and Udall, though most pundits said that in particular Kaine gave a very good speech.
Algore was very dull. His 2004 convention speech was great – he had some really funny lines, some really effective lines, and really good delivery. In marked contrast, this speech was flat, the material was generic, the delivery was poor (totally out of sync with his crowd), and Barack Obama was barely mentioned. Algore is a hero to the hard left, and should have been received with post-Nobel adulation. Instead, he delivered a lackluster speech.
Susan Eisenhower was very disappointing. For one thing, obviously getting the daughter of a Republican former President is a coup, and as a general matter I think that presidential children should stay out of the other party’s limelight (cough, Ron Reagan). For another thing, her delivery was flat and totally out of sync with the crowd.
The retired Air Force general did a fine job – a good speech with clear, crisp delivery. My only complaint was his backdrop – the line of generals looked very impressive, but in the close-up shot he had an African-American woman over one shoulder and a tall white male with hair on his forehead and a blue blazer, no tie. When most Americans think retired military general, they think more of a man that looks like Wes Clark or Gen. Gration, who did the remarks. I would have rearranged the order of the line to get a shot that fit better, that said We think he can be commander in chief.
As for Obama’s speech itself, I think Peggy was right to say that we will remember the occasion – the nomination of an African American for president on the anniversary of the I Have a Dream speech – not the words of the speech. The words were good – one way to combat the inexperience charge is specific policy proposals. If you’re listening and he’s got one proposal after another, you think, Gee, he can’t be clueless if he knows about all this stuff. I’m not sure the attacks on Sen. McCain were necessary – Sen. Biden covered all the same points in his speech on Wed. Maybe they just figured Obama’s ratings would be so much higher that they need to repeat them to reach new viewers. But it seemed to conflict with the “post-partisan” talk at the end of his remarks. And I’ll be interested to see if his hard-left base is content with the wishy-washy talk on abortion and gay marriage – the platform was certainly far more strident than his comments on those topics.
The confetti and fireworks after the speech were great. An aside: I felt bad for Joe Biden that Obama showed up Wednesday night after his speech. That was going to be a time for Biden to bask in the applause and for his family to come out and stand with him and for his photo to grace the front page the next day. Instead, Obama came out and stole his thunder and crimped his style. I realize now that may have been necessary to get the traditional running mates shots – that Thursday was dark, the crowd was arranged differently, you didn’t get the packed patriotic feel of the convention hall and all the people waving flags or message-posters. So instead they did Wed. and Thursday.
On the whole, I think the Democrats had a fine convention. The Clintons behaved, basically. The Warner and Biden keynotes were only okay, but Obama did well in face of sky-high expectations. The media coverage was wall-to-wall and highly favorable. They got a very small bump, 3 or 4 points.
Tomorrow I’ll have thoughts on the first day’s RNC session and the other news o’ the day.
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I’m not sure if you caught it or not, but Hillary Clinton actually had the best speech of the whole convention. Her suit was awful, but her speech made me that much angrier that people fell for Obama’s crap and didn’t pick a candidate that was actually qualified (i.e. Hillary or John Edwards – infidelity or not, he was still a better choice).
In addition, this whole election is turning into an episode of Maury and I’d just like it to go away.