JUL. 28, 2004: AL SHARPTON, DEMOCRAT
8:07. There’s a telling moment in Karen Hughes’ memoir, Ten Minutes From Normal. She has just left the White House. She’s on holiday on a beach, looks up, and sees an airplane pulling a sign: “Sally, I’m miserable without you. Please come back. Bud.” She thinks: “Bad message, Bud. It should be about her, not about you.”
As we go into night three, I’m struck by how much this Democratic convention is about them, not about the voters.
They are constantly congratulating themselves for their moderation and restraint of tone, because their speakers merely call the president a liar and a cheat and a coward, and not also a Nazi and baby-killer.
Good for them, I suppose.
But Americans out there in voter-land have to wonder: OK, congratulations for stifling your Tourette’s syndrome – but what exactly do you Democrats propose to do for us if we give you the jobs you want? What two, three, four things will you guys actually do if you are elected to the White House and in Congress? Don’t tell us about how you’ll ask the Germans and French to help out in Iraq. We know that asking isn’t the same as doing. What will you do - and why don’t you seem willing to tell us?
The psycho-drama of rage and resentment on display in Boston may be very cathartic for you, but we have real concerns about the nation’s safety and prosperity – and you seem interested only in emoting.
8:29. Is it not incredible that Al Sharpton is accepted as a convention speaker and bona fide Democratic leader? Is it not amazing that this proven liar and slanderer is accusing the president of “misleading”? Is it not astounding that this audience that cheers for tax increases on the wealthy will cheer this man who enjoys all the trappings of wealth and yet apparently pays hardly any taxes at all? Is it not outrageous that this men whose racial incitements provoked a fire-bombing and homicide dares invoke the language of civil rights?
Do these Democrats have any intellectual or moral standards at all? Do they even have memories?
8:46. On the other hand, I’ve just learned that Sharpton violated his agreement with the convention organizers and helped himself to an extra quarter- hour, threatening to disrupt the evening’s schedule. Serves the Dems right.
8:58. Mark Shields on PBS makes a shrewd point: John Kerry did not have to give Al Sharpton this speaking slot. Unlike Jesse Jackson in 1988, who may have been deplorable but who arrived in Atlanta with a large bloc of delegates, Sharpton won nothing. He could have been dismissed. He wasn’t. Why We’ve been hearing about how supposedly tough John Kerry is. Why couldn’t he say “no” to Al Sharpton?
9:22. Enjoyed Jennifer Granholm’s clever subliminal appeal to the expat Canadian vote. We are a sexy bunch! But weren’t Mike Myers and Jim Carey available?
9:36 A brief salute to George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis: Can even Democrats wish that any of these guys had been elected?
9:58. It’s never good to see a former chairman of the joint chiefs endorsing a Democrat. On the other hand, judging by the crowd roar underneath Shalikashvili’s speech, the extremely thin applause, and the distracted attitudes of the listeners, it does not seem that this audience much cared about this endorsement.
10:20. OK, I’ll admit it: Elizabeth Edwards was note perfect: She did exactly what someone in her position ought to do at a moment like this. Unlike Teresa Heinz, Elizabeth Edwards understood without vanity why it was that she’d been invited up onto that platform. This was not her moment to share her views on the importance of early childhood education, but to say things about her husband that nobody but her could say – and that modern politics, for better or worse, demands to hear. I was impressed.
10:29. John Edwards impresses too – but in a very different way. To complain about hateful negativism at this convention? E is for effrontery!
10:32. Two specific commitments in two minutes to a “real patient’s bill of rights” – ie, one that permits lawsuits. Never let it be said that John Edwards neglects his base!
10:38. Does this speech make any sense at all? They’re going to raise taxes on almost nobody – and pay for almost everything. Back in 1992, Bill Clinton – to give him his due – based his campaign on a highly specific policy document. That strategy has gone out the window this year. Gov. Granholm kept referring to Kerry’s “plan,” but there is no Kerry plan in any real sense of the word: just darts tossed at a board.
10:47. And the foreign policy section is almost as baffling. A lot of what he has to say is sensible enough – and then at the same time he is suggesting (or anyway allowing the hall to think) that a President Kerry will bring the troops home from Iraq almost immediately.
10:52. “Hope is on the way” – not a well chosen slogan. You sort of think it’s going to be “help is on the way,” but apparently the Dems aren’t quite prepared to promise anything as concrete as that. Edwards suggested you call your brother working late at the office and tell him the good news. But an overworked guy buried under tasks is not going to appreciate it that you take his time with a useless message like that.
10:56. There are certain kinds of actors you watch and you say: “Wow – that guy was really acting.” Edwards is the kind of politician who makes you say, “Yes, that guy’s really a politician.” He was smooth, glib, emollient, full of promises that your hands can’t quite grip onto. Does America want this? My guess: Not this year.
11:17 PM
JUL. 27, 2004: THEY DRONE ON
7:58 It’s being reported that Hillary Clinton reacted to Teresa Heinz’s “shove it” remark with: “You go, girl.” I bet she did! I bet Teresa can’t begin to do enough damage to this campaign to suit Hillary Clinton.
8:02. Robert Caro introduces Ted Kennedy. Well, he knows a thing or two about senators. But the speech doesn’t start well. I thought that line about giving John Kerry a “nice new home” was misconceived. I mean, the guy already has five.
It’s understandable that the Democrats would want to feature Edward Kennedy. He is the party’s second-most senior senator, after Robert Byrd – and the Democrats know enough to keep Byrd off the tube. Alas, the years seem to bear heavily upon Kennedy, and he delivers the dreariest speech yet broadcast. Endless too. So much for Democratic self-discipline and punctuality.
I do find myself wondering with Mickey Kaus why the Democrats would choose to feature their most Paleolithic liberal in prime time, without offering up a single word of praise or remembrance of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who devoted his life to restoring the Democrats’ credibility on national security. Boy does his party need him now.
What was all this talk by the way about emphasizing the positive? Kennedy has almost nothing positive to say about his junior colleague – but a lot of nasty insinuations about George W. Bush.
I notice by the way that much of the structure of Kennedy’s speech is plagiarized from Dick Cheney’s four years ago – the citation of John Adams’ prayer, “May none but wise and honest men rule under this roof”; the invocation of patriot graves. Did you notice though that Kennedy could not bring himself to quote the prayer accurately? That word “men” – unpronounceable! So he purported to quote, but instead surreptitiously reworked the prayer: “May none but the wise and honest rule under this roof.” As Hillary Clinton would say: “You go, senator!”
8:30. Kennedy’s speech finally drags itself to its ghastly end. I’d bet that tonight’s ratings turn out even worse than yesterday’s.
8:42. OK Gephardt’s speech is even worse. Still, when I see him, I can’t help thinking that John Kerry made the wrong choice for VP. Gephardt is no orator – but he takes the nation’s security seriously, and it shows.
8:45. Daschle up now, asking why gas is $2 a gallon in South Dakota and only a nickel a gallon in Iraq. Hey: I thought waging war for oil was a Republican idea?
I note though that former McGovern aide Daschle now says that “answering the call” during Vietnam was “doing the right thing.” You wonder where these proud patriots were in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running against Navy flier and war hero George HW Bush.
9:10. Howard Dean tells a heart-warming story about a girl who sold her bike for $100 to give the money to his campaign. Another ill-calculated anecdote: You’d need 80 Dean supporters to sell their bikes to raise enough money to buy just one of John Kerry’s!
9:15. Could Dean not find even one nice thing to say about John Kerry? Apparently not. The overwhelming impression that a viewer gets from this convention so far: The only candidate that gets this convention excited is George Bush.
9:50. An impressive show by Barack Obama. His speech was all cliché, 100% content-free – but delivered with conviction, force, and the faintest sprinkle of humor. He reminds me of that saying of Napoleon’s: Give me lucky generals. How many people had to drop anvils on their toes to make this guy the front-runner for Illinois’ open Senate seat? But yes, I do believe we are looking at Hillary Clinton’s running mate for 2008.
I wonder though what the people who write the Democratic party’s quota rules think of Obama’s critique of multicultural gerrymandering and appeal to national unity?
10:02 Ron Reagan’s appearance tonight just underscores one more resemblance between Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt: They both had kids whose only purpose in life seemed to me to disgrace their parents. Can't Michael Reagan take out some kind of restraining order?
10:45. Teresa has been speaking for almost 10 minutes and has not insulted anyone – so that’s an achievement. She’s talked about space exploration, energy efficiency, and America’s role in the world. And of course we’re all fascinated to hear her views. But there’s one supremely important subject on which she qualifies as a genuine expert: that is the character and personality of the man the Democrats are about to nominate as president. And on this topic, she offered nothing warm, endearing, or personal. Doesn’t anyone in his party have something nice to say about this guy?
11:05 PM
JUL. 26, 2004: THE DEMOCRATS' OPENING NIGHT
8:15. Is Al Gore bitter? Yikes! His oft-told jokes are told without a smile – one can’t be quite sure that they are jokes. He began by saying that he wanted to look forward, and then immediately switched backward. His face and body looked grim and angry. His endorsement of John Kerry and John Edwards struck me as unenthusiastic; it’s hard to forget that he declined to endorse either. No wonder the Dems scheduled him for the obscurest spot in the whole week. They must have wished they could have omitted him entirely.
8:35. Whose idea was it to let Barbara Mikulski introduce the female senators? True, CNN – the Canadian government does not permit the cable companies to carry Fox – talked over the speech. But you could hear her shrieking voice cutting through the dulcet tones of Jennifer Granholm, and Mikulski’s Jumbotroned image overshadowing Granholm’s beautiful face.
8:50. What a nasty piece of work Jimmy Carter is. Judy Woodruff says she interviewed Carter earlier that day and asked him why he thought John Kerry would outperform Ted Kennedy, that other Massachusetts liberal who ran against Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980. Woodruff quoted Carter as saying: “John Kerry is a different man. He fought and bled for this country and has devoted his life to public service.” Twenty-five years later, and Carter is still ungallantly sniping at his old rival.
9:05. Carter begins with sly digs at George Bush and his Iraq policy. Who remembers now that it was Carter who began America’s unhappy entanglement with Saddam Hussein? Saddam took personal command of Iraq in 1979 – and the Carter administration immediately reached out to him. The story goes that Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski boasted, “Iraq will be to my Middle East achievement as Egypt was to Henry’s.” I’ve never been able to authenticate that quote, but it certainly describes what happened next. Republicans began cleaning up Carter’s messes in 1981; George W. Bush is still at it.
9:15. All in all, a surprisingly nasty and unstatesmanlike performance by Carter. Do you remember that Jeff McNally cartoon of Carter’s “Official Presidential Portrait”? It showed an ornate but empty picture frame – with a tiny four-inch Carter hanging for dear life onto the edge.
9:25. I am impressed by the Kerry daughters’ defense of Teresa Heinz’s “shove it” response: It was just a moment, they said, a human reaction, should be seen in context. The context of course is that Teresa Heinz says things like this and worse all the time – and that John Kerry is in no position to tell her to stop. If Kerry wins, it promises to be a lively four years in the East Wing – that is, unless the presidential staff schedules lots and lots and lots of Idaho private time for her.
10:01. The actress Glenn Close introduces a special presentation on the 9/11 attack. Why her? Why not Michael Moore? I glimpsed him in the special dignitary seats – and its his conspiracy-mongering movie that expresses what so many of these angry delegates really think.
10:06. The presentation turns out to be a halting personal statement by one of the 9/11 bereaved, a Muslim woman originally from Sri Lanka who now serves on the Democratic platform committee. Her speech is followed by a a violin solo of “Amazing Grace,” a dimming of the lights, and a blaze of candles. No words of course – too Christian. And just to distance them even further from the hymn, they chose a violinist named Gabe Lefkowitz. It’s like an update of that old Calvin Trillin joke: “Terrorists strike America – Muslims, Jews suffer most.”
I don’t think I’m alone in finding this segment strangely unmoving. We all remember 9/11; we all will always remember. That is certain. What is uncertain – what will be decided by this election – is how precisely America’s would-be leaders will act on this memory: How they will prevent such attacks in the future and avenge those we lost three years ago. About that, this convention has been oddly silent. We know that tonight’s speakers all opposed the Iraq war. Jimmy Carter doesn’t seem to have been all that enthusiastic about the Afghan campaign either. But as to what they would do – how they would win - that is a topic that seems not to interest these Democrats at all.
10:18. Tucker Carlson tells Wolf Blitzer that he sees a convention that is disciplined and moderate: “You don’t see anyone here who looks like they donate to MoveOn.org.” Hate to disagree with my friend Tucker, but that statement is a reminder of how you can’t judge a convention by being there. Of course the delegates are in a great mood! They’ve been mopping up free food and drink all day – they are preparing for more parties after the formal proceedings end – and their unions are paying their hotel bills. Naturally they are very jolly when you interview them face-to-face. It’s only on TV that the show looks enraged, embittered, and graceless. Of course, it’s TV that the whole country is watching.
10:30. Things have come to a pretty pass when Hillary Clinton is the first sober, sensible voice of the evening. More troops? More pay? Stronger homeland security? A “serious man for a serious time?” Duty and country? And like most middle-of-the-road Americans, she seems to feel no very excessive nostalgia or enthusiasm for Bill Clinton. The best she could say is that the country was better off in 2000 than it was in 1992 – and that, yes, Clinton remains busy today. In one way, though, Hillary’s message has not changed in all these years: It’s still all about her. Given a choice of praising her party’s new nominee – or her husband, its last president – she chose instead to deliver a campaign speech for herself.
10:42. Clinton has been talking for five minutes – and has not yet acknowledged that there’s a war on. Oh wait. Yep, there’s a sentence about terror – then it’s back to global climate change and the need for an international criminal court. And now there’s a long section about the need to raise taxes to equalize sacrifice in wartime. Odd. The clear idea I’m getting from this evening that Democrats dislike everything about this war except the opportunity to raise taxes to pay for the fighting they don’t want to do.
The bottom screen crawl reports that Teresa Heinz is now saying that her “shove off” quote has been taken out of context by the Republican attack machine. Yes, her story is that she was not insulting anyone: She was just giving an order to the captain of her yacht,.
10:50. Clinton has a riff about about how the Republicans are cutting taxes for millionaires like him. This is effective stuff! Who wants to see Bill Clinton get more money? I wonder whether John Kerry will pick up the theme. His family is at least 60 times richer than Bill Clinton’s. Think how much bigger his family’s tax cut would have been – that is, if his family actually paid taxes. Fortunately for them, their money is protected by trusts and careful planning. So the taxes that will actually be raised will fall on people who earn less than Bill Clinton and have far, far less than John Kerry: for instance, you.
10:59. What? No kiss from Hillary at the end?
11:00. OK, I’ll admit it. That was a good speech – the only speech all evening with a trace of humor, the only one to make any kind of case for the party’s soon-to-be nominee. It was generous in a way that Gore’s, Carter’s, and Hillary Clinton’s were not. It wove together Democratic themes in a coherent way. It even offered the evening’s only memorable line that was not a bitter accusation: “Send me.” Good thing we’re not running against him this year. On the other hand, too bad we’re not running against her.
11:20 PM
JUL. 26, 2004: THE DEMS CONVENE
Two great questions overhang the Democratic convention: Will the party succeed in stifling its rage and paranoia? And will the media report it if the party fails?
It’s a rule of modern political journalism: Republican conventions are always horrible, Democratic conventions always delightful. Either the Republicans are producing Nuremberg-style festivals of hate (as Houston 1992 was dubbed) or else they are cynically concealing their true colors (the top story line in San Diego in 1996 and Philadelphia in 2000).
Democrats by contrast can count on favorable coverage so long as they can avoid th outright rioting of Chicago 1968.
Still, this year they will have a tough time. This is a party that is in danger of losing its mind. Its previous presidential nominee Al Gore – who will speak in prime time – has given himself up to wild ranting. Its most important 527 advocacy group hosts on its website political ads comparing Bush to Hitler and 9/11 to the Reichstag fire. Its congressional leaders allow themselves to be photographed stepping into theaters to watch Michael Moore’s nutso “Fahrenheit 911.” Really, things have gotten pretty bad when Hillary Clinton begins to look like one of the most moderate and sensible leaders of the party.
Even if the wackiness is kept under wraps – whether by the organizers or a sympathetic media – the Democrats still have some tough work ahead of them. The Democrats have been following an interesting peek-a-boo strategy with John Kerry. I cannot remember the last time a challenger for the presidency generated so little news. It’s as if the Dems want to keep Kerry off America’s television screens – apparently on the theory that while Americans may like the idea of Kerry if they hear about him, they won’t at all like him if they hear from him.
So this week, much of America will see Kerry in action for the first time. The challenge for Kerry, his writers and handlers, is to present himself as someone who understands the lives and values of ordinary Americans. (The temptation will be to over-reach and present him as someone who actually shares that life and those values – but that will risk seeming ludicrous as the public learns about the Swiss prep school, the $8,000 bike, the voting record in the Senate, and the inherited family fortune.) Can Kerry do it? Can he project some personal warmth and sympathy? Can he suppress for an evening his disdain for political rivals and his orotund and evasive style of speech? Can he lay aside 35 years of Vietnam syndrome and credibly convey a determination to meet and destroy the nation’s terrorist enemies?
Personally, I don’t think he can. But that will be the big interest of this week’s big show.
07:02 AM
JUL. 22, 2004: INVITATION
Let me again extend an invitation to NRO readers to visit the archive of my previously published journalism at www.davidfrum.com. Back Sunday night with Democratic convention curtainraisers.
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