There have been various stories over recent months of people being ejected from Bush rallies for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts and stuff of that sort, with the rationale often being a rather improbable concern for security.
But this Dick Cheney speech in New Mexico seems to be the first instance where would-be attendees were compelled to pledge personal fealty to President Bush in order to get in the front door.
According to this Associated Press story, certain members of the public were required to sign a pledge to endorse President Bush in order to get tickets.
Dan Foley, a Bush campaign spokesman interviewed for the article, tried to argue that the tactic was "a security step designed to avoid a disruption" and said that at least some of the people required to sign the pledge had called from a phone which showed up on caller-ID as ACT (Americans Coming Together), a liberal voter mobilization group.
This article in the Albuquerque Journal, however, says the policy was much more general.
The plan was to limit the tickets "to people with a record of supporting the GOP— or to others willing to sign a statement saying they support President Bush's re-election."
Continues the Journal article ...
Yier Shi, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., said today's rally was meant to reward and enthuse Bush-Cheney supporters, not to be a forum to preach to skeptics.Democrats, independents and others were welcome to attend the speech, he said— as long as they like Bush and Cheney.
(See also this other article on the topic in the Albuquerque Journal.)
For all the ridiculousness of this loyalty oath mumbo-jumbo, I think Shi's rationale is a pretty apt description of the Bush-Cheney election strategy, and one of the clearest signs of their problems.
--Josh Marshall
A lexicographical note on 'stem-winder'.
Late on Thursday evening I said that John Kerry's speech wasn't a 'stem-winder' and that he was smart not to have tried to pull one off. In that case, as the context implied, I meant 'stem-winder' as a rousing or impassioned speech.
However, since then, while most readers have responded to my discussion of the speech itself, perhaps a dozen have written in to say that I used the term incorrectly, that it refers to a boring and long-winded speech rather than a rousing one.
I, for one, have never heard this meaning. For all the adaptability and ambiguity of certain words, it seems odd that one word should have two diametrically opposite meanings. And the two dictionaries I consulted seem to back me up.
Merriam-Webster defines the word thus ...
Main Entry: stem-wind·er
Pronunciation: -"wIn-d&r
Function: noun
1 : a stem-winding watch
2 [from the superiority of the stem-winding watch over the older key-wound watch] : one that is first-rate of its kind; especially : a stirring speech
American Heritage defines it this way ...
SYLLABICATION: stem-wind·er
PRONUNCIATION: stmwndr
NOUN: 1. A stem-winding watch. 2. A rousing oration, especially a political one.
In other words, the dictionary meaning seems pretty clear. Yet enough people are familiar with this opposite meaning that it too must have some currency. That left me wondering whether this was a corruption of the original meaning of the term that has gained currency in recent years. And this article, also sent along by a reader, suggests that is precisely what has happened.
--Josh Marshall
Great moments in Republican <$NoAd$>outreach ...
This from the running Thursday night commentary on National Review Online from Barbara Comstock, former spokesman for John Ashcroft at the Justice Department, former lead investigator for Dan Burton back in the glory days, and now power lobbyist ...
However, there are some things that did strike me about this odd man.John Kerry once administered CPR to a hamster. This was one of the poignant vignettes we learned tonight from one of his daughters. Is there some gerbil-loving swing demographic out there we are trying to connect with? His daughter told this story as if we could all relate to this "human" moment of mouth-to-mouth contact with a rodent. I think I can speak for most parents, that while we might lay down our lives for our children; we see no need to swap spit with vermin.
...
John Kerry may have been able to breath life into a hamster; and he may have been able to breath some hope (or is it help?) into the gerbil-loving delegates; but he's still a strange, Herman Munster-like figure to me.
No mention of the inveterate Bush hatred among the gerbil-lovers. But presumably that's for another column.
--Josh Marshall
I just read this article in the Times, billed as Cheney's counterattack against the Democratic ticket, figuring it would be filled with various distortions and untruths I could pick apart.
Really, though, there's not much there to pick apart, because there's simply not much there. Some boiler plate about raising taxes, the troop funding vote run-around and some stuff about John Edwards hair -- that's about it.
If the Times author is reasonably conveying Cheney's message, it's awfully weak stuff.
--Josh Marshall
Now this is rich.
President Bush's new line of attack is that John Kerry is a man of few achievements.
"My opponent has good intentions," the president said today. "But intentions don't always translate into results. After 19 years in the United States Senate, my opponent has had thousands of votes but very few signature achievements."
This might be a plausible line of attack coming from another opponent. Unlike, say, Russ Feingold or Ted Kennedy, there's no prominent piece of legislation with Kerry's name on it, though admirers of Kerry point to his critical role in a series of high-profile Senate investigations.
But coming from George W. Bush? A guy whose handlers had to get some of the more gullible run of journalists to refer to his life before he turned forty as his 'lost years'?
I mean, even if you grant that Bush's presidency has been a tenure of transcendent achievement (and it has undoubtedly been eventful), it's a bit hard to get around the fact that even by his own account he spent his first five decades kicking back, living off family connections and playing solitaire.
It's certainly true that Mr. Kerry said certain things in his war protestor days that can now be used against him with some audiences. But until he was well into middle-age President Bush's most noteworthy public utterances seem to have been limited to various invocations and inflections of 'par-TAY' and reciting the alphabet under legal compulsion.
(I'd be surprised if the Kerry camp didn't use this as another opening to highlight the difference between how these two men spent their twenties.)
It's also another case of the Bush campaign's internally contradictory lines of attack.
John Kerry: highly ambitious and grasping ne'er-do-well.
George W. Bush: man of action, sword of steel.
--Josh Marshall
In the Boston Globe this morning, Tom Oliphant, no foe of Mr. Kerry, says the nominee "essentially blew an opportunity he may not get again until the debates with Bush this fall" and "muffed an opportunity to hone great material into a powerful address."
I know what he's referring to: Kerry's sometimes rushed delivery. But this seems like a needlessly harsh appraisal and a distorted impression of the speech itself.
From the start of Kerry's speech I could tell that he kept talking into rising applause -- something like the rhetorical equivalent of spitting into the wind. He would nail a good applause line and then rush into the next verse of the speech.
In many cases I wondered or worried that some of those lines couldn't be heard over the din, though I suspected that television microphones would do a better job keeping Kerry's voice audible over the crowd.
At the time this struck me as a function of Kerry's lack of expertise as a public speaker. A master like a Clinton or an Obama can make magic of those moments, half-heartedly trying to talk over the crowd, only to let them again and again beat him back with their cheers. Kerry mowed right through them, though perhaps it was simply that Kerry had a speech he could only get through if he took few or no breaks for sustained applause.
In any case, I really didn't think it was nearly so big a deal as Oliphant did. But I'd be curious to hear others' opinions.
--Josh Marshall
The reference to CNN last night was to their running live on-air the panicked reactions of the convention director as the balloons failed to drop precisely on schedule. Originally it may have been a glitch. But they seemed to keep it running long after they could have rectified the problem.
--Josh Marshall
Another good take on the speech is Will Saletan's in Slate. I remember looking out into the audience at various of those moments of thunderous, almost defeaning response that Will mentions and thinking, they sowed the wind.
--Josh Marshall
A brief note or follow-up on the Kerry speech.
A number of readers have written in to say they were wowed by the speech and ask why I led off saying that it wasn't a 'stem-winder'.
To me there's no contradiction. The term 'stem-winder' isn't simply an evaluation of the quality of a speech, but also -- and more so -- a description of a certain kind of performance. I thought this speech was very impressive, about at the top of the guy's form. To say it wasn't a stem-winder is simply to say that it wasn't like Barack Obama's speech a few nights back, or Clinton's, or even Clark's or Sharpton's for that matter.
But I don't think that's the kind of public speaker Kerry is. And he was wise not to try to be something he's not. He didn't try to be a master of rhetoric or tear into the crowd like those others. This was a well-written, powerfully delivered speech. And what occurred to me as I listened to it was how well the convention planners had used the earlier evenings events and speeches to tee the moment up for him.
I mean that not just in the sense that there's an effort to build excitement for the main event or talk up the candidate --that's a given. I thought they did a good job at playing Kerry up as a forceful and decisive leader. And that allowed him to suit his strengths as a speaker to the moment, to slide his speech-making right into that path they'd carved for him when his moment came.
Of course, I still haven't seen the video of the actual TV-version of the speech. I'm still going on what I saw in the hall, watching the back of his head as he delivered. So perhaps my opinions are still premature.
And a final point, for what it's worth. I talked to numerous reporters in the minutes and hours after the speech. And I think it would be fair to say that every person I spoke to told me that Kerry had exceeded their expectations.
--Josh Marshall
Not a stem-winder -- and Kerry would have been foolish to try. But a solid speech. And I thought he hit all the right points -- with the right emotional tenor. In a way, sitting in the hall and watching the back of Kerry's head most of the time is no way to judge how it appeared on TV. But that's my snap judgment.
--Josh Marshall
"I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation - not the Saudi royal family."
Paging Adel Al-Jubeir ...
--Josh Marshall
For the last four days, this convention hall has always been in motion -- people milling on and off the floor, in and out of the stands, the ever-present floor ushers -- the only real extremists in the whole place -- hustling people out of the aisles. But, now, like it is at the tail end of every national party convention, everyone is stationed in their place.
No one is moving from their seats. No one is leaving the floor, because if you do, you can't go back down. I'm sitting just up and back to the side of the podium and looking out over the crowd, it -- or they -- look like nothing so much as a vast carpet of people, all watching intently, no floor to be seen anywhere.
The crowd was certainly more roused in Barack Obama's speech; but not at any other time has their attention been more rapt.
Cleland just introduced Kerry. More later ...
--Josh Marshall
Actually, apropos of the previous post, the real sucker on this one seems to be MSNBC rather than CNN. At least thus far. As of 5:43, the Ghailani capture is the headline on the MSNBC website, while it gets lesser billing on CNN. MSNBC is even blaring it more than Fox News (oh the infamy!).
As with the earlier post, I'd be much obliged if anyone can tell me whether any of the MSNBC talking heads note the earlier published report in one of America's most respected political magazines (see previous post) about the White House's pressure on Pakistan to produce an al Qaida bad guy during the Dem convention.
Finally, right now I'm watching Wolf Blitzer on his little CNN news perch right off the convention floor doing a live shot. If he's talking up the al Qaida story, why not have on Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, to talk about their above-mentioned story? I'm sure Peter would be happy to come on. And I just saw him here in the Fleet Center not more than twenty minutes ago.
--Josh Marshall
Just-in-time-production?
See CNN's Breaking News Alert: "Security forces have captured a high-level al Qaeda operative in a raid in central Pakistan, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said."
Then, after you see that, remember that we noted in May and then The New Republic reported out extensively early this month, that this White House has been telling the Pakistanis for months that they wanted to see a big-time al Qaida leader -- hopefully bin Laden -- produced during the Democratic convention.
Reuters is reporting that the guy they've served up may be a Tanzanian involved in the 1998 African embassy bombings. So apparently they couldn't come up with bin Laden himself.
But here's the thing. I'm not going to be able to watch the television coverage of this throughout the day. But many of you will. So I'd be very, very curious to hear whether when, oh say, CNN goes on about how this al Qaida guy has been hauled in they will mention at all, or with any consistency, that one of the most respected political magazines in the United States reported just weeks ago on the pressure the administration has been placing on the Pakistanis to serve up an al Qaida bad guy on this day.
Will they make the obvious connection? Or will they just ignore it?
This is just the latest, but perhaps the most blatant, example of how this administration has placed politics and, really, political dirty tricks above national security itself, and along the way persisted in defining political deviance down until tactics we used to associate with banana republics start to seem commonplace here.
And while we're at it, this is yet another example of how truly important it is that we democratize the Middle East. Because once we have, some of them will be able to come back here and redemocratize us.
--Josh Marshall
A few thoughts on Edwards.
Friends who I watched the speech with, down on the floor just to his left, thought Edwards was about 75%. I don't know how much it appeared that way on TV. He may only have come off that way if you'd seen him a lot on the campaign trail.
His voice was slightly hoarse and cracked on certain phrases. He seemed to me like he might be getting sick.
Still, with all that, he has an irresistible charm. And he does wind the themes of this convention together in a unique, compelling way. One point: listening to Edwards tonight, and thinking back to the themes he struck during the primaries, it occurred to me how many of them have been incorporated into the message coming out of this convention.
Another thought ... There was a line down towards the end of the speech that stuck in my head: "We have to restore our respect in the world to bring our allies to us and with us. It's how we won the World Wars and the Cold War and it is how we will build a stable Iraq."
Makes perfect sense, no objection -- either on substance or on politics. But it rattled in my head. Because with those words he committed their administration to the herculean task of holding together all the centrifugal forces that are cutting that country apart.
There's nothing I disagree with in the sentiment. And it is notable (and it's been much noted) that the word was a 'stable' Iraq, not a 'democratic' Iraq. Still, a very tall order. I think Kerry is going to win this election. And I'm optimistic in general. But it has occurred to me more than once that that hypothetical next administration could be brought to grief by the occupation (and it is still an occupation) that this president has embarked the country upon. Those were fateful words, even if correct or inevitable ones.
And finally this. As I said above, I watched the Edwards speech in a standing crowd of journalists and Democratic operatives down to Edwards' left on the convention floor. At my back were two of those alchemists and engineers of sound and color, message and image, the ubiquitous handlers and speechwriters who play such an outsized role in the theater that is so much of politics.
As Edwards finished his speech and began his round of thumbs-ups and pumping fists, and as everyone else in crowd was whooping and screaming and clapping, one of those guys at my back turned to his friend and said, with quiet satisfaction and unfazed observation, "right on time." In other words, all wrapped up just minutes before eleven o'clock. Perfect television.
And it was.
Another legacy of Bill Clinton's impress on the Democratic party.
--Josh Marshall
Early this evening I noted that the tone of the Democratic party assembled here in Boston really is quite different than it was in New Hampshire, and much different from what it was in mid-2003. Democratic 'rage' and 'Bush-bashing' was to a real extent a product of Republican spin. But not altogether.
So why the difference? Certainly it's not because opposition to the president has waned in any way. And I think the fact that the convention is meant to appeal to the swing voting audience actually doesn't play that great a role in the change.
I think there are two main reasons -- and they're fundamental rather than cosmetic.
Reason number one has to do with understanding the dynamics that animated the 2003-04 primary contest. On the surface, the fiery rhetoric and animus of 2003 and early 2004 were directed at President Bush. And to some degree of course they were. But the punch of that rhetoric derived not so much from Democrats' antipathy for President Bush as from a pitched battle, almost a rebellion, within the Democratic party -- the grassroots of the Democratic party insisting that Washington Democrats were compromising with the president over particulars when he was leading the country in a direction that had to be opposed across the board. Fiery rhetoric against President Bush was fiery rhetoric against compromise and accomodation with him. In other words, it was to a very real degree aimed at other Democrats.
The specifics and the rights-and-wrongs of that intra-party debate are complicated and needn't detain us here. But understanding that intra-party debate explains why the tone here is so different. The Democratic party is now deeply united around the proposition that President Bush is moving the country in the wrong direction on almost every front and must be opposed head-on. With that question settled within the party, what is there to be angry about? Is there anger at President Bush? Sure. But no one here is talking to President Bush. So opposition, yes. But anger, much less so. Unity isn't simply a reason or a tool to stifle anger. In a sense, it has eliminated it.
Point two is related to point one. Anger is often, and rage is almost always, an emotion rooted in powerlessness. That was certainly the position of Democrats in early 2003 (on so many levels), though less so as the year went on. These Democrats don't feel powerless. The mood is one of cautious optimism that they can drive the president from office, that the wind is at their backs. That too changes the emotional tone dramatically.
--Josh Marshall
This column by Rich Lowry in National Review Online makes some very shrewd points about Barack Obama's speech Tuesday evening. Praise across the political divide is often rich with backhanded compliments and disingenuousness. He includes some digs. But this is something different.
--Josh Marshall
I'm really enjoying this Wyclef Jean song. But isn't this seriously off-message. I'm surprised it got by the message wizards.
--Josh Marshall
One thing I haven't had much of since I've been here is a sense of how the press is covering this event -- not the quantity of coverage (how many hours an evening), but how they're interpreting it.
Mostly, that's been a matter of the priorities I've given myself, though a relative lack of Internet access has played a role as well. Yet one thing I've heard a lot is this sense that this convention is brimming over with anger and anti-Bush rage and that the organizers are busy tamping it down and doing all they can to keep a lid on the rage.
I haven't see that.
From Republicans this is spin, which is fair enough or at least understandable. From journalists I think it's just laziness or an unhealthy addiction to conventional wisdom. This is my third day now milling through the crowds, listening to conversations, talking with activists and elected officials. And the impression I have is almost exactly the opposite.
This is my third convention. I was at both in 2000.
The Republican convention four years ago was a brimming, often angry convocation. Some of that perception is undoubtedly a product of the prism through which I view these things. But I don't think that's much of it.
Bill Clinton had driven the GOP crazy for eight years, particularly during his second term -- not because of his failings but because of political resilience in spite of them. Partisan Republicans had never really accepted or I think understood how or why he had gotten reelected in 1996. And again and again -- particularly during the Lewinsky mess -- he seemed to rise from the dead. Impeachment was about righteous indignation (or self-righteous indignation, depending on your viewpoint) in spite of political good sense.
Finally, in 2000, with Clinton barred from the ballot, they had their chance. And the backdrop of those pent-up frustrations were ever-present in the hall. Confidence mixed with the animus. But the latter was a constant subtext, though the convention planners went to great lengths to keep the DeLay types under wraps and position Governor Bush as set apart from the partisan antagonisms of the late 1990s.
I remember one speech, perhaps it was Cheney's, I'm not sure. And in that speech there was one rallying cry or veiled remark about Clinton's 'character problems'. And the crowd erupted not with applause but with a sort of rumbling, growing roar that didn't stop.
The Democratic convention in 2000 wasn't the same sort of affair, but it was an angsty setting in its own way. There was a left tired of biting its collective tongue through eight years of Bill Clinton. There was the Gore-Clinton tension, the Gore-Bradley tension, the endless intra-Gore-camp rumbles, and a certain malaise born of having the protection of the presidency for eight years. The party was an odd mix of indifference and near panic. And that, in turn, made the party message-wizards more inclined to dish out red-meat on then-Governor Bush.
This convention is very different from both. There was a mood of anger and frustration and even rage during the Democratic primaries. But not here. In the next post I'll try to give my take on why that is.
--Josh Marshall
I hope it's not an example of the Democrats' organizational muscle. But this morning I've had to abandon the Fleet Center and retreat to a local Starbucks to find reliable Internet access that'll allow me to post some updates.
Yesterday while Barack Obama was speaking, I was making my way around the convention hall floor, trying to listen to the speech while gauging audience reactions. In some ways this is a far inferior way to absorb a speech than simply to watch it on your television screen at home. And I wasn't following every moment word for word. But at some point, perhaps a half or two-thirds into the speech, I could sense a difference in the feel of the crowd and the tenor of Obama's voice. He was electrifying the crowd in a way you seldom see a politician manage to pull off. And I realized I needed to get down as close to the podium as I could.
So I made my way down through the several delegations on the right side of the convention floor and settled in about thirty feet down from Obama's left. What struck me first about Obama is something I've only really seen clearly before in Bill Clinton.
In most politicians -- in most public speakers really -- you can always sense a sort of double motion. You can sense their constant awareness of what they should be doing before they do it, and their inability to get the two to match up. Perhaps this is simply another way of saying that you sense their consciousness of self, the visibility of their artifice, like an actor who looks like he's acting, even if the technical points are hit more or less on key.
Clinton was always different. Whether there was artifice or not, it was seldom visible. His rapport with crowds or individuals was (and is) intuitive. The mastery of voice, sound and expression was always complete. And you could see that Monday night.
As it happens, I don't think that quality in a public speaker is something that can be learned. And on a fundamental level, I don't think it's a matter of artifice, though clearly Clinton has a rhetorical bag of tricks he returns to again and again. It's an emotional quality, an element of personality -- part of that undefinable quality of personal charisma. And that was what was radiating from Obama last night.
This was the passage I found the most powerful, and only in part because of the bare text of the words.
Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
Another point on Obama, to which we'll return. Every great public speaker has an emotional touchstone, a tenor that resonates through all they say and do. Clinton's was empathy and expressive emotion -- something that many people gravitated to irresistibly, and others recoiled from. In that regard, Obama seems altogether different. That Clintonite element is barely present with him. The hallmarks are grace and power, even force. (Watch the hands and the eyes.) And that worked well with last night's invocation of national unity.
--Josh Marshall
This will be an odd sort of correction, but one nonetheless. A number of readers have written in to inform me that Jack Ryan, one-time Illinois Senate candidate, actually didn't want to have his wife have sex with other men in front of an audience in a Paris sex club, as I said yesterday evening. He wanted to have sex with his wife in front of an audience in a Paris sex club. I stand corrected, though with the nature of the distinction you do get a sense of why Ryan is no longer in the race.
--Josh Marshall
I'm sitting here a few minutes after nine, waiting for the big event of the evening, Barack Obama's keynote address. It's hard to overestimate how much expectation looms around this guy. The Democratic party yearns for this man's political future like Dick Cheney lusts after the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea.
Obama probably would have won the Illinois Senate seat in November by a solid margin regardless. Now it's not clear that it'll even be a contest after his opponent's candidacy collapsed amid his would-be party constituents close-mindedness about his desire to see his movie star wife have sex with other men in Paris sex clubs. So he was sort of a martyr to Babbitry, you might say.
In any case, he'll be the only black man in the Senate; and he'll have a relatively safe seat, as senate seats go. He'll be an instant star of his party. And all the folks who have antennae for political magic are all atwitter over him. I've been watching him give interviews and work the crowd and the tell-tale grace and poise isn't hard to see.
--Josh Marshall
I got a chance to sit down with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle this afternoon and ask a few questions. I'll be writing up more of the conversation later this evening or tomorrow. But for the moment, a couple tidbits.
I asked Daschle to name some possible Senate Dem pick-ups that people might not have on their radar screens. Three names: Nancy Farmer in Missouri. Joe Hoeffel in Pennsylvania. Daniel Mongiardo in Kentucky.
Any hope the Senate Intelligence committee might report on any of the second phase of its investigation (i.e., the part that might have anything remotely to do with the Bush administration) prior to the election? "Not a chance."
--Josh Marshall
One thing that is now apparently part of the modern presidential campaign is the laying-on-of-hands photo montage -- the key being visuals of the metaphorical handing off of the political torch and ethereal transmission of politico-cultural Mojo.
I guess Clinton got this started off with those pictures of himself at the Boys Nation ceremony with President Kennedy back in something like 1963. And I think there was some of this with President Bush too, though I can't remember who the luminaries were.
But Kerry's got both of these characters put to shame.
On one of the floors of the Fleet Center -- the third or fourth, I think -- there's a small gallery of Kerry photos. And if you make the rounds of them you see that there's a laying-on-of-hands image for almost every slice of the Democratic soul.
Of course, there's Kerry with Jack Kennedy. But Kerry was actually a hip dude. So, for instance, there's a young Kerry with John Lennon. And then Kerry with Coretta Scott King. And, actually, in a highly literary flourish, there's even John Kerry with Arthur Miller of all people.
(A friend of mine pointed out that there's even a double-layered Marilyn Monroe subtext in that one.)
I'm going to head back later for further analysis.
--Josh Marshall
It took me most of the day today to get a sense of how I'd cover this sprawling enterprise for this medium. And as you can see below I spent most of the night getting down on to paper some rough thoughts of what the first day of the convention was like, making up for a dearth of updates earlier. Tomorrow I'm going to try to meet up with some of the House candidates who seem like they may have a shot at knocking out some Republican incumbents. And rather than the razzle-dazzle celeb parties, I want to hit some of the state delegation events, to get a feel for what's happening in some key states.
--Josh Marshall
Keep your eye out and you're bound to see this argument -- now floated by many conservative columnists -- that Kerry may win because voters need a breather -- a time-out, if you will -- from the turbocharged rush of history we've experienced over the last three years under George W. Bush. The president has simply accomplished so much, bent the world so mightily to his will, that Americans are craving a return to normalcy, as that campaign neologism once had it.
We thirst for mediocrity -- the road more travelled -- and Kerry quenches us.
But, really, how many times has the American electorate punished a president for accomplishing too much? Franklin Roosevelt? Harry Truman? Theodore Roosevelt? Where are the examples?
The reference Peggy Noonan put forward was with Kerry playing the Warren G. Harding to Bush's Woodrow Wilson. But Wilson's presidency, in tandem with his health, had collapsed over his efforts to secure a settled peace after World War I.
Rather than taking it on its merits, though, I have a different take on this argument. It's a rhetorical or logical reasoning halfway house on the way to a realization of how badly the president has screwed up what one might generously call his ambitious plans. As with Kubler-Ross's grinding five stages of grief, first we have denial. Then anger. And with this argument we have something akin to that tipping-point stage of 'bargaining' -- the sensible pundits' first tip-toe out onto a serious consideration of the impact of the president's term of office.
--Josh Marshall
This afternoon I exchanged emails with a friend who's involved in crafting the evening's message, asking him about the standing orders to steer clear of any personal attacks on the president or even, it seemed, any invocations of the president's name. "This will not be a Michael Moore event," he told me, after confirming the gist of what I'd read in various press accounts.
Then hours later, as I was leaving the Fleet Center, making my way down an escalator to the first floor, I looked across the few feet separating me from a parallel-running escalator and saw, yes, Michael Moore.
First, I should say, as I side note, that trying to pull off an impromptu interview, with pen and pad, calling out questions from one escalator to another, is a perilous endeavor, as you're apt not to be paying attention when the escalator ends or simply be looking the wrong way. But let's not distract ourselves with that. Just file that away for future reference.
In any case, there I am a few feet from Moore; and it's one of the first times all day when I can think of a question to ask someone where I'm really curious and uncertain as to what the answer will be. So I ask him what he makes of all of this. No attacks on the president. Not even any mention of the man's name. It's like the anti-Michael Moore event. Or rather the non-Michael Moore event. (I caught myself the first time, realizing that hadn't come out precisely as I'd intended.)
Clearly, the guy didn't know what to make of me. And as he breezes by he says, "Oh, Really? I liked it. You don't even have to say it. Everyone knows how bad it is."
Think what you will about Michael Moore or evening one of the convention, I think that sums up precisely what this event is all about and the dynamic on which it's operating. I've seen a slew of articles today arguing that the Democrats must energize their 'base' while not alienating the swing voters John Kerry needs to clinb from the mid-40s past 50%.
But this strikes me as a tired conventional wisdom that has little to do with what's actually happening here.
To be in the hall tonight -- or even to have watched the Democrats closely for the last five or six months -- is to know that that tension or trade-off hardly exists.
When it first occurred to me to write this post I was going to say that partisan Democrats have decided to give Kerry a free hand in appealing to independents and swing voters. But that doesn't get it quite right. That was the case in 1992 when the party's core voters, after twelve years out of the White House, were willing to give Bill Clinton all sorts of leeway with what most viewed as his DLC heterodoxies. But something different is at work here.
Among Democrats, the rejection of this president is so total, exists on so many different levels, and is so fused into their understanding of all the major issues facing the country, that it doesn't even need to be explicitly evoked. The headline of Susan Page's piece in USA Today reads: "Speakers offer few barbs, try to stay warm and fuzzy." But the primetime speeches were actually brimming with barbs, and rather jagged ones at that. They were just woven into the fabric of the speeches, fused into rough-sketched discussions of policy, or paeans to Kerry.
Perhaps it's a touchy analogy, but like voters who understood the code-words Republicans once (and often still do) used to flag hot-button racial issues they dared not voice openly, these Democrats could hear the most scathing attacks on President Bush rattling through the speeches they heard tonight.
--Josh Marshall
I have little to report thus far. I spent most of today getting situated at the place I'm staying, getting my credentials, finding out where everything is and so forth. But what has struck me thus far is that the security -- at least in the hall, and immediate vicinity -- doesn't seem that different from what I remember four years ago at Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
On the streets of Boston, the police presence is palpable. But it's mainly street cops on the corners and stuff like that.
I'm sure the souped-up security is there, probably in places I haven't been. But it hasn't been as visible as you might expect.
(Of course, maybe I've just grown accustomed to the new way of things since September 11th. I don't remember seeing anyone in combat fatigues at either of the 2000 conventions ...)
--Josh Marshall
Early today I buzzed by the MSNBC convention coverage site (probably through the ad link they're running on this and other blogs) and was flabbergasted to see that they've absorbed the blogging model to something like a mind-bending degree. Fineman's got a convention blog now. Hardball has some sort of pan-show blog. And on the latter, even Andrea Mitchell seemed to have typed out a post or two. I had to wonder whether her husband, Alan Greenspan, might be next. Perhaps an FOMC blog?
I've never been much for the blog triumphalism that seems always to be so much a part of the blog universe. Blogs make up a small, specialized niche within the interdependent media ecosystem -- mainly not producers but primary or usually secondary consumers -- like small field mice, ferrets, or bats.
When I see the mainest of mainstream outfits buying into the concept or the model I really don't know what to think. The best way I can describe my reaction is some mix of puzzlement and incredulity.
I've always thought of this as just a vehicle for writing -- a mix of reporting and opinion journalism, done in a format that allows a maximum degree of flexibility, not bound by limitations of space -- the need to write long or short -- or any of the confining genre requirements that define conventional journalism.
The whole thing is mystifying to me.
And, yes, I just arrived late this evening in Boston.
--Josh Marshall
