ON DEADLINE: Democratic keynote speech didn't soar
By WALTER R. MEARS, AP Special Correspondent Wed Aug 27, 6:10 AM ET
DENVER - Barack Obama broke the mold when he delivered a Democratic convention keynote address that made a major difference, for him and for his party. It was a one-time thing. Mark Warner got back to the old, fully forgettable keynote rhetoric.
ADVERTISEMENT
He delivered no keys, no ringing notes, nothing special.
Warner's speech Tuesday night was the predictable call for voters to elect Obama president. Along with the predictable complaint that Republican John McCain would offer more of the same.
But in fairness to Warner, convention keynote speeches generally are routine stuff.
Obama roused the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004 with a keynote speech that not only set the tone that night, it really was a key, leading to his remarkable political climb from Senate candidate to 2008 presidential nominee. His note — the politics of hope — echoed in his campaign for the nomination and will be featured again in his address accepting the Democratic nomination on Thursday.
Keynote speakers are convention fixtures, although there is no clear historical record to tell why. Selecting one gives the party a favor to bestow. It doesn't always turn out to be a favor though. Not when they keynoter flops, which isn't unusual.
Sometimes there is supposed to be a signal in the selection, as was said of Warner, the former Virginia governor, now far ahead in the polls for election to the Senate this year. Obama's camp had floated the possibility that current Gov. Tim Kaine was a potential running mate. All part of an effort to capture Virginia in the presidential election, which no Democrat has done since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
But Warner has his own campaign to run, and he wants Republican and independent votes in a state given to ticket-splitting. That may account for his keynote stress on bipartisanship.
Besides, by election day not many voters are going to recall, or care, who gave the keynote speech in Denver.
The keynote tradition is difficult to track. It may date from 1920, when Republican Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge was the party's convention chairman, banged the gavel and gave an opening address denouncing President Wilson and his political heirs. Headlines called it the keynote.
According to Congressional Quarterly's convention history, the regular designation of keynoters in both parties dates from 1936. There aren't many memorable names on those early lists, although the Democrats' 1936 keynoter was Sen. Alben Barkley, who would be elected vice president a dozen years later. There was no connection.
There was a straight line between Obama's keynote address to the Democrats in Boston four years ago, as "the skinny kid with the funny name" sought the Illinois Senate seat he won that fall, and his rise to national attention. He spoke then, as now, of "the diversity of my heritage," and he called his address "The Audacity of Hope."
Near its conclusion, he used words much like those he uses as presidential candidate:
"We are one people, all of us, pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?"
His performance that night and its impact were more than rare, they were extraordinary. Even the best of keynote orators could not use their moments on stage to launch themselves as Obama did. The closest, perhaps, was Mario Cuomo, then governor of New York, whose keynote address at the 1984 convention in San Francisco was a powerful summons to Democrats to turn America from Ronald Reagan. "There is despair, Mr. President, in your shining city," he said. Reagan was re-elected in a landslide.
Cuomo's speech drew ecstatic reviews, and heading toward the 1988 presidential election, he ranked among the top Democratic prospects. Cuomo dithered, run or not, and then said no.
In 1988, Texas Gov. Ann Richards taunted then Vice President George H.W. Bush as a man who couldn't help his ways because he was "born with a silver foot in his mouth." Nice line, but Bush won the presidency that year. And the Bushes got more than even — George W. Bush beat Richards for governor in 1994.
In 2000, the Republicans decided they wouldn't have a keynote speaker. Nobody much cared.
In 1992, the Democrats had three. One was future political turncoat Zell Miller, governor and then senator from Georgia, the Republican keynoter in 2004.
Next week, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who fell from early leader to early loser in the Republican nomination race, will be keynote speaker at the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn. He's not a noted orator, and he will have something to prove. He'll have to counter Joe Biden's quip that a Giuliani sentence has only three elements: a noun, a verb and 9/11.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — Walter R. Mears has covered national political conventions for The Associated Press since 1964. |
